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1 week ago | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
4.
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2 weeks ago | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
Today Financial Crime News is publishing an updated Financial Crime Dashboard on Singapore after spending a few weeks meeting many financial crime leaders in the city state, and just ahead of the FATF assessors coming to town for their 5th round onsite. See: FCN Singapore Dashboard 2025The last full FATF evaluation was published in 2016 with a follow up report in 2019 so a lot has changed since then, both in terms of the threat and the response.
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1 month ago | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
UAE National ML/TF Risk Assessment 2024 – Commentary by FCNThe public edition of the NRA runs to 72 pages and provides much needed information and gives a much better explanation of the threats and vulnerabilities faced by those in the UAE but with only some of the NRA available publicly any independent assessment of the full NRA is always going to be limited. Overall the UAE has called out ML threats as highest coming from predicate crimes that are expected.
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Feb 22, 2025 | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
Scams made the front cover of the Economist’s Feb 8, 2025 edition titled “Scam Inc”. It claims, “every year US$500bn is stolen in online scams” and now it “rivals the international drugs trade”. The source is an “expert in Chinese organised crime who was a police officer in Hong Kong for 11 years. That puts scamming on a par with the illegal drugs trade as one of the world’s biggest illicit industries”. The source named in the piece is well credentialed but he left the HK Police in 1999.
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Feb 20, 2025 | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
Final Remarks With almost a quarter of a century of data on fines for Banks & FIs, there are no straightforward conclusions as the data can only tell so much and can support both an argument that Banks probably need to do more and at the same time it’s only some Banks at some times (albeit many of the so called leaders in the industry) that have been found wanting and or that supervisors are active in using effective proportionate and dissuasive sanctions or that they have allowed major...
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Feb 20, 2025 | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
The evolution of AML supervision to achievegreater effectiveness is an important element in the improvement in effectiveness of the AML regime overall. Whilst effectiveness overall should be concerned with reducing levels and harms from financial crimes, to supervisors it has been more about the integrity of the financial system by promoting and monitoring compliance with anti financial crime regulations.
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Feb 20, 2025 | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
6. Relative Rating of Predicate Offence Crimes & ML – Countries publish H/MH/M/LM/L ratings for their PO Crimes and ML related crimes, and for Sectors (& sub sectors) but the rating represents a distribution based on the difference in the threat in a particular country, and not based on comparative assessments, as such all countries will have high ratings but these high ratings may not represent the same level of threat. 7.
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Feb 20, 2025 | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
Bank of America (BoA) has been slapped with a Cease and Desist Order by the OCC requiring that it must do better and quickly. BoA has one of the best reputations and perceived as one of the leaders in the industry in AML/CTF. Whilst rumours of pending regulatory action and remedial action long underway at BoA has been circulating for some time, not least with the onboarding of significant additional resources, the OCC has now detailed its findings.
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Feb 19, 2025 | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
Punishing Putin by Stephanie Baker is well worth a read and is a well documented reminder of what the last 2 and half years of western sanctions against the Russian regime for its unlawful invasion of Ukraine has meant which has involved targeting finance, oil and gas, elites, oligarchs, defence, electronics, to name the most important at unprecedented levels.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
thefinancialcrimenews.com | John Cusack
TD is the 2nd largest Bank in Canada, the 6th largest in North America and 10th largest in the USA, with globally 28 million customers, and total assets of US$1.52 trillion. TD employs around 90,000 people and is present in many financial centres around the world with retail businesses in Canada and the USA. RBC is the 5th largest in North America, with Scotiabank 9th and Bank of Montreal 10th. On 10th October, US authorities announced fines and penalties against TD in the USA.