We have been reading about a lot of Money Laundering scrutiny recently. HSBC is in depp trouble and had to pay massive penalties. Now we have Standard Chartered Bank accused of non compliance with US OFAC regulations by supporting Iranian businesses conduct transactions out of SCB's NY office.

While these are serious situations, one thing is pretty clear. There is a distinction between the two instances.

While in case of  HSBC, there may not have been strong internal controls to detect suspicious transactions, HSBC's intent to comply with regulations was there. In other words, it was due to poor controls the non compliance came about.

But in case of SCB, it seems (as of the date of this blog) that the intent was never to company with US's AML regulations. The controls then did not have any significance.

Riskpro views Anti Money Laundering (AML) activities seriously. We believe that AML regulations are pure black or white. You either comply with regulation or you don't. There is a sanction list/negative list. If a client or a country has been barred from business, there are no two ways. You should just not do business with them, even if it means losing lucrative business.

With the way things are going, AML/KYC will become the single biggest risk factor globally and the single biggest challenge for the Banking community to address. This is where Riskpro can do its little bit. Simple ground level advisory and support in good technology implementation that can get your organisation that much closer to AML compliance. Please contact at manoj.jain@riskpro.in