Compliance Corner: US Treasury, Monetary Authority Of Singapore, Others

Editorial Staff

19 April 2021

US Treasury Department
The has said that Vietnam, Switzerland and Taiwan have gone over its thresholds for possible currency manipulation under a 2015 US trade law, but the organisation did not formally state that these countries are currency manipulators.

The Treasury said that it will start to engage with Taiwan and continue talks with Vietnam and Switzerland. The latter two countries were branded by the Trump administration, as of December last year.

The Treasury said that Taiwan, Vietnam and Switzerland exceeded 2015 currency thresholds during 2020 - a more than $20 billion bilateral trade surplus with the US, foreign currency intervention exceeding 2 per cent of gross domestic product and a global current account surplus exceeding 2 per cent of GDP.

“Under the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 (the 1988 Act), Treasury has determined that there is insufficient evidence to make a finding that Vietnam, Switzerland, or Taiwan manipulates its exchange rate for either of the purposes referenced in the 1988 Act,” the department said in a statement last Friday.

Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, said: “Treasury is working tirelessly to address efforts by foreign economies to artificially manipulate their currency values that put American workers at an unfair disadvantage.”

The department said that 11 economies warrant placement on its “Monitoring List” of major trading partners which merit close attention to their currency practices: China, Japan, Korea, Germany, Ireland, Italy, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Mexico. All except Ireland and Mexico were included in the December 2020 Report.

Monetary Authority of Singapore, Bank J Safra Sarasin
The has imposed a composition penalty of S$1 million ($749,373) on has reprimanded Optimas Capital and fined it $1.05 million over failures to ensure short position reports for a collective investment scheme under its management complied with local reporting rules.

An SFC investigation following a self-report by Optimas found that a total of 350 reportable short positions held by the CIS had been omitted in 56 SPRs prepared and submitted by Optimas to the SFC between 23 June 2017 and 9 July 2018, the regulator said in a statement.

The errors found in the SPRs prepared by Optimas occurred as a result of a programming mistake in a script developed by its operations manager at the material time. The script in question was created to automate the process of identifying short positions held by the CIS in order to filter out those that were reportable. However, Optimas failed to detect the programming mistake promptly due to inadequate supervision and review over the work of its operations manager at the time.

The SFC considers that Optimas had failed to act competently to ensure that the SPRs it prepared would be accurate and compliant with the applicable requirements under the SPR Rules.

In deciding the sanction, the SFC took into account all relevant circumstances, including Optimas’ prompt remedial actions and cooperation in resolving the SFC’s concerns and its otherwise clean disciplinary record.