The fight against financial crime is an ongoing priority for governments around the world. The ability of criminals and criminal organisations to use financial institutions to launder funds, along with the potential risk to their reputations, and ultimately to their safety and soundness, continues to be a concern for financial and other regulators. Over the past several years there has been extensive action in many countries to implement permanent measures to fight money laundering and terrorist financing. Experts have been suggesting new ways to check money laundering and frauds through transaction screening, real time monitoring, pattern analysis and mandatory reporting of grey transactions. The aim of the conference, organised here by the Foreign Exchange and Remittance Group (FERG) last week, was to discuss new and sophisticated Anti Money Laundering (AML) measures, set out best practices to combat frauds and highlight new risks and fraudulent methods being discovered in the industry. The group recommended that financial institutions should develop a compliance programme to meet AML laws and monitor every payment routed through their systems to counter fraud. The discussion highlighted the possibility of ‘smurfing’, a new colloquial term for a money launderer. Also refers to one who seeks to evade scrutiny from government agencies by breaking up a transaction involving a large amount of money into smaller transactions that are below the reporting threshold. The term is derived from the cartoon characters known as The Smurfs. The conference stressed on the need for financial institutions to develop and implement a compliance programme to meet AML laws and standards including reporting, record keeping and client identification obligations. There is necessity for all exchange houses to deploy AML compliance vested software to monitor every payment instructions routed through their system, importance of vigilance, staff training and regular auditing to check any irregularities coming to the surface.
