The U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit fined a Florida credit union $300,000 Tuesday for providing banking services to high-risk money services businesses with few anti-money laundering controls.
Cash-strapped banks facing federal mandates to hire outside consultants to improve their compliance programs are increasingly seeking lower bids from anti-money laundering consultants to get the work done cheaply, say compliance professionals.
These transactional reviews, which rely on historical and potentially stale data, have little usefulness for regulators seeking to identify laundering, says New York-based consultant John MacKessy.
United Roosevelt Savings Bank and Eurobank, in cease and desist orders issued Tuesday, were instructed to look for transactions that should have triggered currency transaction reports or suspicious activity reports. Both were cited for other deficiencies in their anti-money laundering programs.
Account history reviews are often expensive but their lengths can be negotiated, according to KPMG Forensic principal Darren Donovan.
Banco de la Nación Argentina must correct AML deficiencies at its New York branch, mainly in transaction monitoring.
The federal regulator told Commerce Bank/Harrisburg National Association that it must scrutinize its software vendors and consultants more closely for Bank Secrecy Act compliance, a demand that indicates financial institutions can't shirk their responsibilities by outsourcing them.
The Federal Reserve and New York State Banking Department entered into a written agreement with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. on Wednesday ordering its New York branch to improve Bank Secrecy Act compliance deficiencies a month after another Japanese bank was cited for risk management deficiencies.
The Federal Reserve Board and the New York State Banking Department on Thursday ordered the New York branch of a Pakistani bank to improve its enhanced due diligence procedures.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the New York State Banking Department reprimanded the Bank of Tokyo's Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Company on Monday for "unsafe and unsound" practices in its New York branch.