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Record Fines, FATF Revisions, Sanctions Galore: How the AML World Survived 2012
printBy Brian Monroe, Colby Adams, Larissa Bernardes and Brian Orsak Let it be known that in the year the Mayan calendar ran down and the world was saved from certain destruction, financial institutions too had their struggles. In and out of the headlines, Bank Secrecy Act officers weathered congressional scrutiny, tougher enforcement and record fines. For many anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions professionals, 2012 will be remembered as a year of record fines. Banks paid billions to settle AML and sanctions compliance violations, with one penalty alone reaching almost $2 billion. In July, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI)...
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Sometimes a decline in bank enforcement actions isn't a good thing, even for bankers. Such is the takeaway of a review of enforcement action data spanning back five years, during which the number of formal Bank Secrecy Act penalties fell nearly 20 percent while fines and regulatory demands grew.
In the messy art of prognostication, everything is overly easy and nothing exact, not even compliance expectations. But one thing government officials and financial industry representatives seem certain of: 2015 will prove just as challenging as the past year for AML professionals.
In a year when the number of enforcement actions issued by federal financial regulators fell by nearly half, Bank Secrecy Act-related penalties earned an unusual distinction. They declined by less than 14 percent.
With plenty of convincing reasons, representatives of the law enforcement and compliance industry say the coming year is fraught with serious challenges.
Relative to the year before, the anti-money laundering (AML) compliance industry drew few headlines over the past 12 months, and yet no one would tell you their job got any easier.
Fines and monetary settlements paid in 2012 by banks for anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing violations increased 131-fold from the previous year, ACAMS moneylaundering.com data shows.
Though none can predict the future, one thing in the AML world seems certain: the jobs of compliance officers won't get any easier in 2013.
I'm not going to give you that "best of times, worst of times" crap in summing up 2012. When it comes to the year in compliance, there was just the "worst of times" and not much, if any, "best."
Criticism of the U.S. Justice Department's apparent decision to forego indictments of HSBC and its employees misses a larger point: the department probably couldn't have won convictions if it tried, say prosecutors.
The U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions enforcement agency fined a Japanese bank nearly $8.6 million Wednesday for violating sanctions against Iran, Sudan, Myanmar, Cuba and weapons proliferators.
A nearly $330 million deferred prosecution agreement with a London-based bank reinforces the peril financial institutions face when engaging in look-backs for possible sanctions or anti-money laundering violations.
Standard Chartered Bank's pending settlement with U.S. authorities for violating sanctions against Iran demonstrates the high-stakes compliance challenge inherent in holding U.S. dollar clearing accounts, say analysts.
U.S. Treasury Department officials are weighing whether to exempt trusts and offer more flexibility on verification requirements in an upcoming proposal that would impose data collection duties on corporate accounts held at banks.
The number of federal anti-money laundering enforcement actions issued in the first half of 2012 fell by 35 percent in comparison to the total levied during the same period last year, data shows.
The total number of anti-money laundering enforcement fines handed down by federal regulators rose by 67 percent in 2011 compared to the previous year.
Compliance with beneficial ownership standards will be one of the top priorities for Financial Action Task Force examiners during the group's next round of jurisdictional reviews, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday that it was considering imposing customer due diligence currently applied to private banking and correspondent accounts to all accountholders at depository institutions.
Law enforcement data requests and Bank Secrecy Act regulatory filings rose for the U.S. Treasury Departments financial intelligence unit in the last fiscal year, according to an annual report released Thursday.
Whether the economy improves or stays flat in 2012, the coming year will pose a number of new challenges for the compliance professionals charged with implementing sanctions and anti-money laundering controls, say industry leaders.
Tax investigations, political turmoil and economic sanctions were among the biggest challenges faced by the compliance departments of financial institutions in 2011, say bank officials and industry experts.