COMPLIANCE = It’s all about making it easier to do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing To help compliance and ethics practitioners to effectively perform their role, The Red Flag Group® has devised some suggestions for compliance officers to get ahead and demonstrate that they can add value in their companies. […]

A former law firm compliance and money laundering reporting officer has been fined £10,000 for the way he handled five conveyancing transactions. A judgment from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said the case should serve as a warning to lawyers to ensure they ‘discharge’ their senior duties. Anthony Gale, former partner at Yorkshire firm Maurice Smiths […]

On 13th December 2017, new and far-reaching Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Regulation came into effect. The changes in the AML regulations affect financial businesses domiciled in the Cayman Islands. The entities that fall into scope are all entities that are otherwise investing, lending, administering or managing funds or money on behalf of other persons (this includes […]

In the offshore investment funds arena, the importance which is now attached to the exercise of proper oversight and control by the governance bodies of investment funds is stimulating debate as to how these governance responsibilities can be effectively supported. The governance body of an offshore investment fund is typically non-executive in nature, in that […]

A spate of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement cases involving several prominent financial services firms has renewed concerns that compliance officers could be blamed for violations committed by others at their companies. Now, a group representing financial services industry compliance professionals is demanding clarity. The National Society of Compliance Professionals (NSCP) wants the SEC […]

Compliance officers are gatekeepers. They guard the integrity of the markets. They have a hard job and need to be protected. But with that special standing comes something else – Accountability. These days the SEC along with other regulators (see Jersey https://archive.comsuregroup.com/news/stm-fiduciaire/ ) is holding compliance officers (and similar roles e.g. MLRO) to a higher […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced an award Wednesday of about $1.5 million to a compliance professional who provided information for an enforcement action against the whistleblower’s company. The award went to a compliance officer “who had a reasonable basis to believe that disclosure to the SEC was necessary to prevent imminent misconduct from causing […]

The FCA has banned and fined two former senior executives of Martin Brokers (Martins) a total of £315,000 for compliance and cultural failings which facilitated the firm’s misconduct in respect of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). David Caplin, Martins’ former chief executive, was fined £630,000 in 2014 for attempted manipulation of LIBOR Jeremy Kraft, […]