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The Reserve Bank of India, the national banking regulator, has issued INR1.5cr (USD165,276) fines to three public sector banks and issued to cautions to eight more for failure to implement appropriate measures to prevent and detect AML/CTF. The censure comes in the wake of a thematic review of KYC in banks which found a lack of due diligence carried out in public sector banks and a concerning use of intermediaries to open and operate accounts.....More
Regulators’ salaries across Asia Pacific vary enormously:some supervisors earn fortunes and others hit the pay scale at the average to low end.
January 15th saw a round of face to face meetings for jurisdictions found to be lacking in the last FATF plenary, with the APG ML in Sydney....More
This is the time of year to roll out the platitudes and look back over the past 12 months, at the high points and low points and this blog is no exception.
South East Asia is about to become borderless; someone is keeping tabs on the North Korean leadership apparatus and campaign financing is under the spotlight.....More
Since early October, students in Hong Kong have protested against China’s reneged promise of free and fair elections. This coming from the country who protested last when its citizens lost money en masse due to the misselling of minibonds in 2008. They used to say that HK only protests if the people lose their money. Clearly, this is no longer the case.
Last week, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi hit the headlines with his promise of bank accounts for every household in the country, a bid to offer help to the country’s poor. The initiative is part of a movement towards financial inclusion, which means making financial services accessible by people who do not have formal identification documents, fixed abodes or even known dates of birth.....More
Influential, wealthy and ‘lawyered-up’ entities are settling bribery cases with prosecutors by throwing money at the case in order to avoid admitting guilt or proving innocence. What message does this send out to the world?
This month’s APAC bulletin from the ICA looks at the massive and sudden resurgence of terrorist financing threat from the Middle East, we glimpse inside the Singaporean financial sector and comment on how APAC financial institutions could get the jump on compliance culture changes spearheaded in Europe and the US.....More
The military coup in Thailand is well publicized. As of May 31st, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the junta chief has declared he will remain in charge of Thailand until the country is ready to elect a new civilian PM via democratic elections. He estimates this will mean at least 15 more months of army control for Thailand. So far, it does not appear to be making much of a difference to tourism. I saw no changes on the small island I live on, nor in Bangkok where bars, cafes and street side massage chairs were open after ten and full of customers, nor on the Thai Burmese border where farang pubs are closing the doors at curfew, but keeping the customers inside.
The Hurun Report has been producing an annual list of China’s wealthiest people for the past 15 years, based upon estimations of how rich someone is according to the information made public about them. Both the Forbes and Hurun lists agree that Wang Jianlin is China’s richest man with somewhere between USD14bn and USD22bn under his control. Putting aside the trifling USD8bn difference for a moment, a new small but significantly wealthy and connected group of people has emerged in China. The so called ‘problem rich’ are under the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.....More
When someone asked me to cover this region for the first time, I thought it was ambitious. The more I learned about Asia Pacific (APAC), the more that statement made sense. Financial services compliance in APAC is moving at both light speed and a snail's pace, depending on where you are standing.