Keeping Up With the Regulators — September 2019 Week #3 and #4

Your weekly briefing on what’s new in KYC/AML for FinTechs

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

As promised, Fractal is sharing our (this time bi-)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:

Keeping Up With the Regulators — September 2019 Week #1 and #2

Find the last two weeks’ briefing below:

Weeks 13.09.2019–20.09.2019 & 20.09.2019–27.09.2019

What’s cooking in the regulatory space?

• France: France pushes for an EU-wide framework governing cryptocurrencies
• Greece: FATF publishes mutual evaluation report on Greece
• India: Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code prevails over Prevention of Money Laundering Act in a decision by the Appellate Authority
• Kenya: Commercial banks warned to be extra vigilant to prevent the depositing of illicit funds ahead of old Sh1000 end-use on September 30
• Latvia: 17 600 shell companies closed down as a measure to reduce the use of Latvia’s banking system for money laundering
• Poland: UODO, Data Protection Authority, stated that banks are not entitled to make copies of personal ID cards of their clients at all times
• Romania: New AML Regulation will apply from 17 January 2020
• Switzerland: FINMA publishes stable coin guidelines
• UK: Prudential Regulation Authority addresses prudential supervision of money laundering and terrorist financing risks with banks and investment firms
• UK: AML regulations could apply to firms that produce open-source software and wallet software
• UK: HRMC publishes the list of entities that did not comply with AML regulations
• Ukraine: Cabinet of Ministers supports the draft law on preventing and combating money laundering, financing terrorism and financing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
• USA: Presidential order expands the persons to whom terrorism sanctions can apply and raises the stakes for non-U.S. banks, crypto exchanges and more
• USA: AI to Assist Law Enforcement Act — a bill to promote the use of new technologies in the fight against money laundering — passed the U.S. House of Representatives

News

• “In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of libra on European soil”, says French Finance Minister
• Five Dutch banks want to team up to increase efficiency in the detection of suspicious transactions
• Brazil Supreme Court chief says money laundering unit overreached
• Lagarde says regulators need to recognise digital currencies’ wider social benefits and allow them space to develop
• Crypto firms struggle to find a solution to comply with FATF’s travel rule
• The Marshall Islands goes ahead with the plan to have a national cryptocurrency
• UpBit announced it will cease trading support for Monero, DASH, ZCash, Haven, BitTube and PIVX due to money laundering concerns
• Despite the regulatory backlash, Facebook still plans to launch Libra in 2020

The AML’s Watch

• Australia audits PayPal for AML/CTF compliance
• Man in Toledo sentenced to prison for faking identification cards
• PrivatBank gets a 1M € fine from Latvia’s financial watchdog for insufficient AML controls
• Standard Chartered Plc fined billions of dollars since 2012 for not having documentation to show the sources of some clients’ wealth
• EU’s next justice commissioner, Belgium’s Didier Reynders, is being investigated for alleged corruption and money laundering in Congo
• Tanzania’s central bank fined five commercial banks over $800,000 for breaching anti-money laundering rules
• ABN bank is being investigated for money laundering

Add this to your knowledge folder

• The relevance of the Basel AML Index for your AML compliance
• LexisNexis launches a guide on the changes introduced by the 5th AMLD
• An overview of Malta’s crypto strategy

Good reads

• Regulators are worried that Libra will compete with sovereign currencies
• Australia’s innovative model for bringing financial institutions and regulators closer in solving AML inefficiencies
• Globalization, money laundering, and the truly “problematic jurisdictions”
• The MLCA and BSA merger, and the shift from a reasonable risk-based to a rigid procedure-driven approach to AML in the US
• The money laundering risk of antiquities trafficking and how the EU is fighting back
• How Europe is receiving Libra
• What Kenya expects of accountants in the fight against money laundering
• Broken down story of Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal

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.