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Singapore fines Standard Chartered for money laundering breaches
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Pedestrians walk past Standard Chartered signage in the Central district of Hong Kong on Aug. 2, 2017. (Agence France-Presse/Isaac Lawrence)
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wo units of Standard Chartered Bank were fined in Singapore Monday a total of US$4.9million for breaches of the city-state's law against money laundering and terrorism financing.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) slapped the British lender's Singapore branch with a fine of Sg$5.2 million and its local trust unit Sg$1.2 million.
MAS, Singapore's central bank, said in a statement the two entities failed to meet the requirements of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism law.
The breaches happened when trust accounts of customers of the local branch were transferred to Singapore from the Channel Island of Guernsey from December 2015 to January 2016.
MAS said it found their "risk management and controls in relation to the transfers to be unsatisfactory".
MAS questioned the timing of the transfers which it said were done "shortly before" Guernsey implemented the Common Reporting Standards (CRS) on tax transparency endorsed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
This "raised questions of whether the clients were attempting to avoid" their reporting obligations, the central bank said.
Despite the questionable timing, the bank and its trust unit "did not adequately assess and mitigate against this risk factor, and also failed to file suspicious transaction reports in a timely manner", MAS said.
"MAS requires financial institutions to adequately assess money laundering risks when deciding whether to accept customers," said Ong Chong Tee, the central bank's deputy managing director.
"They should also have in place good systems and processes to monitor customer transactions. We expect financial institutions to remain vigilant by instilling a strong risk culture."
