Two suspicious minds better than one in curbing dirty money flows

Singapore

EVERY year, roughly 35,000 suspicious transaction reports (STRs) are filed with the Singapore regulators by banks and other businesses to flag financial transactions that may smell fishy, Singapore regulators told The Business Times.

These are used to drive the rising use of data analytics by both the Singapore authorities and the banks to hunt down criminal typologies. Regulators and banks are joining forces by using a combination of STRs and individual bank's payment networks to shut bank accounts used to funnel illicit flows.

In 2017, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) set up a partnership with eight banks here and the Association of Banks in Singapore,…