Swiss banks often file suspicious activity reports only as a reaction to "external information," while penalties Swiss regulators levy in response to serious compliance violations fall short of deterring future misconduct, according to the Financial Action Task Force. In a mutual evaluation published Wednesday, the intergovernmental group ranked Switzerland "compliant" or "largely compliant" with 31 of 40 standards for combating money laundering and terrorist financing, and noted the significant progress the nation has made in the 12 years since its last assessment. Switzerland also received "substantial" or "moderate" scores for all 11 "immediate outcomes" FATF introduced three years ago to...
While U.S. officials periodically have announced plans to more frequently punish individual bankers, the practice has long been the norm in Switzerland, where the country's chief banking regulator can use a variety of mechanisms to pursue employment bans against individual bankers.
U.S. rules against illicit finance are, for the most part, sophisticated and comprehensive, but minimal regulation of attorneys, accountants and other nonbank firms constitute significant, longstanding loopholes that money launderers and terrorist financiers can exploit.
The Financial Action Task Force will work in the coming year to help nations struggling to adjust to its revised evaluation methodology, the intergovernmental group's new president said Wednesday.
An intergovernmental group that sets compliance standards will soon evaluate the counterterrorist laws of dozens of nations in light of turmoil in Iraq and Syria and recent attacks in Europe.
Some jurisdictions will likely struggle to comply with a call by the world's top anti-money laundering watchdog to assess their own vulnerabilities to financial crime, say industry experts.
The world's premier financial crime watchdog declined Friday to suspend Turkey's membership and disclosed how its assessors will begin evaluating jurisdictions on the efficacy with which they fight illicit finance.
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