AML COMPLIANCE OVERVIEW

In the post-9/11 era, Anti Money Laundering (AML) legislation and compliance to AML requirements have become key focus areas for banks, law firms, asset management firms, auditors and similar regulated service providers. World-Check, the leading global AML intelligence solution, provides an overview of AML compliance and the laws underlying this area of regulatory compliance.

According to the latest KPMG Global Anti Money Laundering Survey, published in 2007, a staggering US$ 1 trillion per year is being laundered by financial criminals, drugs dealers and arms traffickers worldwide. With this much laundered money in the wrong hands, criminal syndicates are able to expand their operations, resulting in more violence, higher levels of addiction and a range of related socio-economic problems throughout the world.

Laundered money is also known to finance highly coordinated international terrorist activities; a phenomenon that poses a clear and present danger to worldwide political and economic stability.

As such, Anti Money Laundering and the Combating of Terrorist Financing (CTF) can only be treated as pressing objectives of global concern. A sharp worldwide increase in the amount of wealth in private hands, combined with the multinational expansion of leading financial institutions, further necessitated the expansion of supranational legislation and law enforcement structures to combat money laundering and related financial crimes.

History of Anti Money Laundering Compliance Laws

Although AML compliance has been accentuated by recent global developments, it is by no means a new regulatory issue. Modern Anti Money Laundering regulations are to a large extent informed by the earlier experiences of the Swiss banking community, where financial scandals involving the likes of Nigeria’s General Sani Abacha and the Philippines’ Marcos family resulted in extremely bad publicity for the institutions involved.

The arrival of the new millennium was marred by a series of coordinated acts of terrorism and a number of massive corporate scandals involving the likes of Enron and Riggs formerly a leading American financial institution.

These events highlighted the fact that money laundering had taken on epic proportions over time, and that the proliferation of new technologies and communication platforms had created countless opportunities for fraud, money laundering and other elicit financial activities. They also accentuated the need to “know your customers”, and led to the creation and implementation of a range of KYC and AML laws aimed at preventing financial criminals from accessing and abusing financial systems.

Given the fact that the greatest majority of criminal activities generating profits only start generating a traceable paper trail once funds are introduced into the financial system, it was deemed necessary to approach AML compliance and law enforcement in a way that clamped down on abuses of the world’s official banking and financial systems. To this end, regulatory, legislative and law enforcement agencies set out to create an AML compliance framework and cross-border law enforcement regime aimed at holding financial institutions accountable for their clients’ transactional activities.

Preventing reputation damage

Against this backdrop, reputation damage emerged as a threat to the very existence of financial services providers, and hence reputational risk mitigation became a key priority for banks, law firms and other regulated service providers that rely on a good reputation to remain in business.

AML laws and related regulatory legislation

Money launderers and entities financing terrorism were operating on a global scale; compliance laws and regulators inevitably had to adopt a global focus in order to clamp down on financial crime.

One of the common traits of AML and CTF laws and the resultant Know Your Customer and KYC-related regulations is the fact that creation and implementation was characterised by an exceptionally high level of voluntary international cooperation between the United States and other prominent members of the international community. These AML laws have subsequently been adopted on a national level by the majority of nation states, with non-compliant countries effectively ostracising themselves from the international economy.

The following AML laws are considered legislative landmarks, and paved the way for global roll-out of Anti Money Laundering regulation and law enforcement:

The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001

The PATRIOT Act is widely regarded as one of the legislative benchmarks driving AML regulation worldwide. The Act includes extensive regulatory stipulations for financial service providers ranging from banks and asset management companies to law firms and institutional lenders, and places significant emphasis on the ongoing assessment and mitigation of operational risk.

The PATRIOT Act requires regulated institutions to implement a client identification programme (CIP), and to screen transactions and clients for risk on a routine basis, amongst other key criteria.

Learn more about the USA PATRIOT Act.

The Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000

HM Treasury’s enactment of this AML law served as an operational framework the Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA), which started operating in 2001. Significantly, it served to facilitate the move from a voluntary compliance culture to a statutory one.

Learn more about the Financial Services and Markets Act.

The Proceeds of Crime Act of 2002 (PoCA)

In terms of AML law enforcement in the United Kingdom, the UK Proceeds of Crime Act (2002) would make the disclosure of income sources mandatory, and also gave law enforcement agencies such as the Organised Crime Force the legal muscle to seize undisclosed assets funded by illicitly generated profits.

Significantly, the Act also makes explicit provisions for the handling of seized goods and assets to prevent further foul play once financial criminals have been apprehended. This piece of AML legislation broadened the range of entities being regulated, and constituted a substantial expansion of the breadth of principal and non-disclosure offences.

As with many of the other key AML laws, PoCA’s objective is simple: to ensure that financial crime doesn’t pay. Combined with the Financial Services and Markets Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act serves as a rigorous legislative framework for combating money laundering. Non-compliance with these AML laws earned Northern Bank and the Bank of Scotland a fine of £1.25 million each, proving that regulatory authorities were taking money laundering in the UK very seriously.

Basel II Accord

Basel II is the second of the famous Basel Accords, issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Basel II replaced the 1998 Basel I Accord, and serves as a regulatory framework for strengthening the stability of the international banking system. It also includes explicit measurement criteria for operational risk, and essentially serves to foster a stronger risk mitigation and AML compliance culture within the financial services sphere.

Read more about BASEL II.

EU Second Money Laundering Directive

The EU Second Money Laundering Directive of 2001, or 2MLD, constituted a significant expansion of cross-border Anti Money Laundering legislation. The Directive increased the regulatory scope in terms of the types of financial and serious crimes being combated to include all serious crimes, but also placed AML obligations on a far wider range of industries. Newly regulated industries included estate agencies, casinos and the purveyors of high-value goods, as well as the legal and accounting sectors.

2MLD outlined procedures for reporting suspicious transactional activities, and had the task of ensuring that a uniform enforcement framework was adhered to in six member states, namely the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain, Lithuania and Poland. Although the Directive expressly named money laundering and fraud, member states were also given the permission to define any other offences for the purposes of the Directive as well.

EU Third Money Laundering Directive

The impending EU Third Money Laundering Directive, also known as 3MLD, incorporates the objectives of the EU Second Money Laundering Directive and is intended to further curb abuses of the European financial and banking systems. Its stated primary aim is to include Anti Terrorist Financing within Anti Money Laundering provisions, and it has served to expand and consolidate the provisions of 2MLD.

The Third Money Laundering Directive, with the support of the JMLSG (Joint Money Laundering Steering Group), will see UK authorities implementing an even more rigorous enforcement regime to prosecute non-compliant institutions.

Businesses that have never made a disclosure regarding suspect activities are already being targeted, as the parameters of what constitutes money laundering are drawn so wide that not unearthing something suspicious is virtually impossible.

Given a particularly broad definition of “suspicious activities”, it is virtually impossible not to stumble across something irregular, and hence failure to notify the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) of suspicious activities or transactions is treated as a sign of non-compliance.

The AML compliance landscape is a complex one, and despite the fact that most banks and regulated service providers have willingly invested in compliance infrastructure and procedures, many institutions are struggling to surmount the operational challenges of remaining compliant – and hence still face a significant reputational risk.

As the global industry pioneer and leading provider of highly structured risk intelligence, World-Check’s database has been proven to effectively mitigate the legal, operational, and reputational risks associated with money laundering, fraud and the funding of terrorism.

Trusted by 47 of the world’s 50 largest financial institutions, and featuring an annual client contract renewal rate of more than 97%, the facts speak for themselves.

Find out more about World-Check’s AML intelligence solution, or email us at contact@world-check.com.