Singapore’s financial regulator has fined wealth and fund management platform Swiss-Asia over anti-money laundering breaches.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has imposed a penalty of S$2.5 million ($1.5 million) on Swiss-Asia Financial Services over breaches of anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) requirements, according to a statement.
MAS also issued a reprimand to Swiss-Asia CEO Olivier Pascal Mivelaz and chief operating officer Steve Knabl for failing to discharge their duties and functions of ensuring compliance with AML/CFT requirements.
Regulatory Failures
According to MAS, a series of breaches at Swiss-Asia were uncovered during an inspection. They include failures linked to taking into account certain relevant risk factors relating to the company’s customers and business activities in its enterprise-wide risk assessment; customer due diligence; scrutiny of third party transactions; identification of customers of high money laundering risk; submission of suspicious transaction reports; and internal audit.
«Between September 2015 to October 2018, [Swiss-Asia] experienced significant growth in its business,» MAS said. «However, its AML/CFT controls across a wide range of areas did not keep pace with the growth and had been inadequate, resulting in multiple breaches of MAS’ AML/CFT requirements over the same period. This exposed [Swiss-Asia] to the risk of financial crime.»
