Articles Archive - Page 3 of 46

Banking: Are legal departments a culture-free zone?

Following the 2008 financial crisis and the revelations of misconduct by major banks which attracted large fines, regulators across the world encouraged banks to reform the culture within their organisations so that, in future, customers would be treated properly and fairly. One way the banks responded was to create… Read More

Pursuing unexplained wealth in Nigeria: It’s time to take on the enablers

Despite the efforts of the incumbent President to fight corruption, Nigeria remains one of the countries that constantly top the world’s corruption rankings. According to Transparency International’s 2017 Corruption Perception Index, Nigeria is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, ranking number 148 out of 180 countries covered… Read More

The perfect AML programme: A ten point guide

Does the ‘perfect’ path to anti-money laundering (AML) exist? The quest for the perfect plan can be traced back to criminals causing immeasurable damage for many economies through money laundering. In response, governments are continuously trying to fight back, issuing a raft of rules and penalties for financial institution (FIs)… Read More

How Rabobank’s compliance unit ended up in hot soup again

Anti-money laundering expert and former undercover agent Robert Mazur has picked out some interesting aspects of the worrisome role compliance officers played in the Rabobank money laundering scandal in the US, which resulted in the bank being fined hundreds of millions of dollars and its top… Read More

Fighting corruption? It’s worth considering a preventive approach to asset recovery

In today’s environment sophisticated criminals are deploying (and ever more so) complex financial vehicles to conceal the location and source of misappropriated assets. Corrupt 0fficials in government departments or private firms are known to use such assets to purchase mansions, posh cars and other luxuries, and frequentky shift the cash… Read More

Money laundering: Smurf banks large piles of dirty cash, claims innocence

Legal expert and author of ‘Asset Forfeiture Law in the United States’ Stefan Cassella examines a recent case involving a woman in the US who was paid by a drug dealer to be a smurf, transporting and depositing large sums of money into various third party bank accounts. She argued… Read More

Money laundering in Nigeria: HSBC, Standard Chartered named and shamed over ‘murky past’

HSBC has found itself in political hot water in Nigeria, after President Muhammahdu Buhari launched an extraordinary public attack on the bank. In a recently released statement to Nigerian media, the President’s office accused HSBC of helping to launder over $100 million on behalf of Nigeria’s former President, General Sani… Read More

Things fall apart: Ex-‘best friends’ UK and Cayman Islands in fresh fight

There’s been a new twist to the rather amusing relationship between the United Kingdom and its former chum the Cayman Islands. In a recent development, British financial police chief Donald Toon expressed frustration with Cayman, saying that his National Crime Agency (NCA) was “asking for information we don’t get”… Read More

Money laundering: Wild, wacky compliance failures from ING, Danske banks

It is hard to deny that compliance has a reputation for being a little on the dull side. Regulations, forms, processes, and GDPR are enough to make even the most pernickety person fall asleep. Occasionally, however, particularly when it all goes horribly wrong, the wreckage of a broken compliance regime… Read More

Hybrid banking: Merging artificial intelligence and humans to combat fraud, transform services

By Raisa Ostapenko From the discovery of an eighth exoplanet circling distant star Kepler-90 to Microsoft’s ambitious new project to map and decode the human immune system, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and especially its subset Machine Learning – a field of Computer Science that gives computers the ability to… Read More