Financial Crime News

2 months ago | 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.

2 months ago | 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...

2 months ago | 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.

2 months ago | 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.

2 months ago | 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.