Compliance
Compliance Corner: Guernsey, Standard Chartered
The latest compliance news: regulatory developments, punishments, guidance, permissions and new product and service offerings.
Standard Chartered
Standard Chartered Trust (Guernsey) has started to wind up its
business, shutting down its trust and fiduciary services
operations in the Crown Dependency.
The liquidation of the business is being handled by Deloitte, as
shown by a statement from Standard
Chartered on its website. The close follows the bank’s
application on 19 May to liquidate the business. The wind-up
order was given by the Royal Court of Guernsey.
The
Guernsey Financial Services Commission on 4 June imposed a
£140,000 ($175,537) penalty on StanChart’s Guernsey business,
following “historical failures” to meet minimum licensing
requirements under rules covering fiduciaries, administration
firms and company directors. The GFSC statement gave few other
details.
The Guernsey business of Standard Chartered has had problems
before. In October 2017 Indonesia probed reports that $1.4
billion held by the bank in Guernsey, mainly on behalf of
Indonesian clients, was transferred to Singapore just before the
island moved to new tax transparency rules. The Monetary
Authority of Singapore in March 2018 levied penalties of
S$5.2 million ($3.73 million) on Standard Chartered Bank,
Singapore Branch and on Standard Chartered Trust (Singapore)
Limited ($1.2 million).
MAS and the Guernsey regulator were investigating the movement of
assets in late 2015 - months before the Channel Island adopted a
global framework for the exchange of tax data. Under those rules,
countries automatically share annual reports on accounts
belonging to people subject to taxes in each country. Britain,
Guernsey and Singapore have all signed up, but Guernsey
implemented the rules ahead of Singapore.
“The timing of the transfers raised questions of whether the
clients were attempting to avoid their CRS reporting obligations.
However, SCBS and SCTS did not adequately assess and mitigate
against this risk factor, and also failed to file suspicious
transaction reports in a timely manner,” MAS had said in its 19
March 2018 statement.
