Singapore Trumpets AML Progress, Mulls Crypto Regime

Tom Burroughes

9 April 2019

Singapore’s financial regulator has lauded financial institutions in the Asian city-state for helping to fight money laundering and warned that crypto-currencies and other new channels present new threats.

“Going forward, combatting proliferation financing will remain a priority risk area for Singapore. Sanctions evasion methods continue to rise in sophistication and complexity, and FIs must evolve their detection capabilities in tandem. We have observed during our inspections a number of successes in banks detecting and deterring such illicit behaviour,” Ho Hern Shin, assistant managing director (banking and insurance), based on the numerous red flags observed and subsequently exited these relationships,” she said.

“In another example, a bank’s rigour in checking a corporate customer’s sources of funds uncovered that the company had been funded by a problematic company set up by this company’s previous director. There was also adverse news that this previous director was involved in setting up multiple shell companies to evade sanctions. The bank was concerned that the directorship had been changed to mask the previous director’s continued association with this company, as well as several other companies. With further indication that this company could also be a shell company, an STR was filed, and the relationship exited,” Ho Hern Shin said.

MAS has been at the centre of one of the largest illicit money sagas of recent times. In May 2016 it removed bank licences from Switzerland's BSI and Falcon Private Bank because of these firms' serious failings in handling transactions linked to scandal-hit 1MDB, the Malaysian state-run fund.