Keeping Up With the Regulators — August 2019 Week #1
Your weekly briefing on what’s new in KYC/AML for FinTechs
3 min readAug 5, 2019
As promised, Fractal is sharing our weekly briefings to help FinTechs stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the KYC/AML regulatory space. In case you missed our last issue, here it is:
Find this week’s briefing below:
Week 26.07.2019–02.08.2019
What’s cooking in the regulatory space?
- Australia: The limit imposed on cash transactions does not affect cryptocurrencies
- India: The draft bill that aims to make it illegal to “mine, generate, hold, sell, deal in, issue, transfer, dispose of or use Cryptocurrency” was submitted to the Department of Economic Affairs
- Israel: The new AML law aided tax evasion control
- Japan: Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association demands better taxation of cryptocurrencies
- Pakistan: Two bills aimed at conforming the AML/CTF framework to FATF standards were cleared by the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance
- Philippines: Banks warrened to only transact with registered virtual currency exchanges
- UK: HM Treasury files AML/CTF supervision report
- UK: The FCA has finalized its guidance on crypto assets after reviewing 92 responses to the consultation paper
- USA: Senate will hold a hearing on crypto and blockchain regulation on July 30
- USA: FINRA extended the deadline for companies to provide data regarding their crypto activities to July 31, 2020
- USA: Corruption in emergency food imports triggers new sanctions against Venezuelan President’s stepsons, a Columbian businessman and others
- USA: Joint Statement on Risk-Focused Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering Supervision issued and analysed here
News
- Ripple’s CEO is concerned that the attention Libra has been getting will trigger harsher regulation of the sector
- Egypt hosts the annual AML/CTF workshop that counts with the presence of the FATF, the World Bank and the IMF
- Number of money laundering cases rose 40% in Japan
- Aximetria, a personal finance app for both fiat and cryptocurrencies, won a license from the Swiss Regulator
- Iraqi individuals and companies help Iran circumventing US sanctions
- In light of BaFin’s crypto licensing requirements for 2020, BitPay suspends operations in Germany
- NY adds 6 experts to the Digital Currency Task Force
The AML’s Watch
- William Green indicted for converting client’s cash into bitcoin without the required money transmitting license
- Swiss bank UBS might have settled a money-laundering investigation for 3 million euros
- Ladbrokes Coral Group to pay £5.9m for AML breaches
- Amid accusations of money laundering, the shares of the Indiabulls group fell by10%
- The Bank of New Zeland is reportedly failing to comply with AML
Add this to your knowledge folder
- Analysis of Canada’s amendments to the money laundering offence in the Criminal Code
- Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission’s AML Guideline in review
- What the FATF says about regulation and supervision of financial institutions
- Key takeaways from the amendments to Canada’s AML framework
- Trends in sanctions policy and AML regulations under Trump’s administration
Good reads
- KYC vs privacy and financial inclusion — ways to solve the incompatibility
- McKinsey explains why anti-money laundering should be a top priority for financial institutions
- Washington’s fear of cryptocurrencies — why?
- Belarus, Bahrain, Malta and Gibraltar might be in the juicy part of the spectrum of crypto regulation
- The enablers that allowed the chairman of the biggest bank in Azerbaijan to launder millions
- The threat posed by FATF’s crypto travel rule
About the Author:
Catarina Veloso is a legal counsel at Fractal — Catarina specialized in energy law and focused on how blockchain technology can contribute to the management of electricity grids; but an unexpected(-ly happy) turn of events lead her to work closely with Fractal’s product team to remove all the friction while keeping all the compliance in a global KYC/AML onboarding solution.
