Keeping Up With the Regulators — October 2019 Week #3
Your weekly briefing on what’s new in KYC/AML for FinTechs
3 min readOct 22, 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 last weeks’ briefing below:
Week 11.10.2019–18.10.2019
What’s cooking in the regulatory space?
- Australia: Parliament to assess a draft bill establishing the obligation to declare all forms of non-cash money over $10,000 when travelling
- Croatia: Ministry of Finance opened a consultation on a draft ordinance to adopt the 5th AMLD
- Finland: “Wall of shame” for entities that have not taken the necessary steps to prevent money laundering is on the plans
- International: Highlights of the outcome of FATF’s Plenary Meeting:
- Jurisdictions no longer subject to monitoring: Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia
- New jurisdictions subject to monitoring: Iceland, Mongolia and Zimbabwe
- Iran has a final deadline of February 2020 to comply with international norms
- Pakistan escapes the blacklist for now but could land there if there is no progress until February 2020
- Pakistan: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) sets up a cell for combating money laundering and terror financing
- Palestine: Palestine Monetary Authority adopts a new banking system to tackle money laundering
- Philippines: Anti-Money Laundering Council replaced its penalty metrics and lowered the sanctions imposed for AML violations
- Russia: New rules for the cryptocurrency market will distinguish between ‘Virtual Assets’, ‘Technical Tokens’, and ‘Digital Finance Assets’
- South Africa: Financial Intelligence Centre and Reserve Bank are working on an AML framework for crypto
- USA: Finra issues 2019 Report on Examination Findings and Observations, covering AML
- USA: ILLICIT CASH Act, pending in both Houses of Congress, would effectively end all shell companies with anonymous ownership
- USA: Regulators issue statement reminding entities engaged in activities involving digital assets of their AML obligations. Ballard Spahr LLP provides an analysis
News
- Estonia’s finance minister says the country should get the majority of the fines banks under investigation will face
- FATF points out the AML risk posed by stablecoins
- The UK processes a record number of DAMLs (a suspicious activity report that institutions file for consent to conduct certain transactions)
- G20 wants money laundering and illicit finance risks addressed before global digital currencies are rolled out
- COO says he’s confident that the Libra Association will have 100 members by the time the currency launches, despite the recent drop-outs
- Transparency International attributes AML’s failure to the lack of tools to track down the owners of companies suspected of criminal activity
The AML’s Watch
- $4 million fine applied to a New Zeland money transfer company for repeated breaches of the AML legislation
- UBS settles money laundering investigation for 10 million euros
- Assets seized in PMC Bank money laundering case
- Turkish bank faces prosecution for allegedly evading US sanctions on Iran
Add this to your knowledge folder
- Overview of the implementation of the 5th AMLD in Austria
Good reads
- Leveraging AI for AML compliance: integrating AML with fraud and making AI explainable
- “[T]he global anti-money laundering system is a failed experiment” and more
- The struggle of AML compliance for small exchanges and the centralization of the crypto industry
- Mass adoption of crypto will come with regulation
- Crypto self-regulation: what is out there?
- The reasons behind Libra’s drop-outs
About the Author:
Catarina Veloso is a legal counsel at Fractal and co-chair of INATBA’s identity working group — 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.
