The central bank said it has penalised several top global financial institutions, including Citibank and UBS, for breaches linked to the island-state’s biggest money laundering case.
Ten people originally from China but holding various nationalities were jailed in Singapore in the S$3bil (RM9.9bil) case.
They used Singapore’s financial system to launder illicit proceeds from gambling and scams, with observers saying the case hurt Singapore’s reputation as a global financial centre.
Following their arrests in 2023, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched an investigation into financial institutions that had dealings with the group as customers.
Concluding its probe, the MAS on Friday imposed penalties totalling S$27.45mil (RM90.96mil) on nine financial institutions for breaches in anti-money laundering safeguards.
“The breaches arose out of poor or inconsistent implementation of these (anti-money laundering) policies and controls,” the authority said in a statement.
The shortcomings included inadequate customer risk assessment and failure to detect or follow up on certain “red flags” detected in documents that should have cast doubt on some of their clients’ sources of wealth, according to the MAS.
Eight of the institutions “failed to adequately review relevant transactions flagged as suspicious by their own systems”, the regulator added.
“The relevant transactions were unusually large, inconsistent with the customers’ profiles or showed unusual patterns.”
The convicted money launderers held assets, including luxury cars, jewellery, designer goods, cryptocurrency and cash – all seized by police.
Those punished by MAS include local lender United Overseas Bank (UOB), which was hit with a S$5.6mil (RM18.5mil) penalty.
The Singapore branch of Credit Suisse, which collapsed in March 2023 and was acquired by rival UBS, was given a S$5.8mil (RM19.2mil) penalty. — AFP
