SINGAPORE, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced on Monday it has imposed penalties of 5.2 million Singapore dollars (about 3.95 million U.S. dollars) on the Singapore branch of Standard Chartered Bank (SCBS), and 1.2 million Singapore dollars (about 0.91 million U.S. dollars) on Standard Chartered Trust (Singapore) Limited (SCTS).
According to a press release, MAS found that SCBS' and SCTS' risk management and controls in relation to the transfers of trust accounts of SCBS' customers from Standard Chartered Trust (Guernsey) to SCTS from December 2015 to January 2016 to be unsatisfactory.
MAS said the SCBS and SCTS did not adequately assess and mitigate against the risk factor, and also failed to file suspicious transaction reports in a timely manner, for those transfers that occurred shortly before Guernsey's implementation of the Common Reporting Standards (CRS) for the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters.
It said the timing of the transfers raised questions of whether the clients were attempting to avoid their CRS reporting obligations.
The press release quoted MAS' Deputy Managing Director Ong Chong Tee as saying that the authority requires financial institutions to adequately assess money laundering risks when deciding whether to accept customers, and to have in place good systems and processes to monitor customer transactions.
