Cross-border efforts and guidelines key to combating financial crime

GLOBAL efforts to close the spigots for illicit money flows intensified in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Centre.

Over the past decade alone, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued a slew of guidelines for financial institutions, including banks, asset managers and insurers, prescribing a set of practices and governance structures, and strengthening the anti-money laundering legislation.

The latest leak of documents filed at the United States' FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), reveals more than US$2 trillion in suspicious transactions between 2000 and 2017. This is likely just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It is based on a review by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) of documents - so-called suspicious activity reports (SARs) - filed by institutions to FinCEN. It is estimated that as many as 12 million SARs were filed in the period, and journalists reviewed just a fraction or 0.02 per cent.