The U.S. Congress began a series of hearings on Tuesday to consider ways to reform money laundering and illicit finance laws applied to casinos, as a president of a payments company argued the current system is broken and driven by perverse incentives. “Our current anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the finance of terrorism (CTF) is […]

HM Treasury has published: a consultation on the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, which (i) outlines responses submitted and the UK Government’s policy positions following its previous consultation on the transposition of the Fourth Money Laundering Directive and Fund Transfer Regulation (see daily news 16 September 2016); and (ii) is accompanied by a draft of the […]

THE 8 SHARED BUSINES RISK The Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC) and Industry agree that the following pose the most severe of the different risks facing companies in Jersey with financial crime risks being the most severe risks. Terrorist funding and Secondarily financial crime more generally Other risks cited included Financial failure, loss of confidential […]

The EU’s executive body has promised new legislation in the Spring to make sure the exchanges and users of virtual currency platforms such as Bitcoin are identifiable and traceable. The reason? Terrorism. The move was announced as part of a raft of measures to make it harder for terrorists and their backers to move around […]

On January 19, FinCEN issued an advisory, FIN-2016-A001, to provide financial institutions with guidance on reviewing their obligations and risk-based approaches with respect to certain jurisdictions. According to the advisory, on October 23, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) updated two documents identifying the following: jurisdictions that are either subject to the FATF’s call to […]

Following the publication by the Financial Action Task Force of two statements identifying jurisdictions with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) regimes (see daily news 2 March 2015), HM Treasury has published an updated advisory notice advising firms to: consider Iran, Myanmar and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea high risk […]

Bitcoin-friendly businesses that were eyeing European locations as regulation-free environments for virtual currencies may need to reconsider as AML – CTF and related KYC (CDD) concerns are at the fore there as well as in the U.S. On Friday, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published an opinion recommending both that banks avoid most bitcoin-friendly customers […]

In a short period of time, virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, have developed into a powerful payment method with ever growing global acceptance. Virtual currencies offer an innovative, cheap and flexible method of payment. At the same time, the unique and often unfamiliar business model of virtual currencies poses a challenge to regulators around the […]