Money Laundering Bulletin

Time-tested mechanisms to transfer value - operating outside the formal banking sector, beyond sight of regulators - are a persistent challenge for anti-money laundering and more urgently in countering terrorist financing. Add in crypotocurrency and payment via mobile options and search, find and seizure have been complicated further still, find Paul Cochrane, Raghavendra Verma, Ramadhan Rajab and Keith Nuthall, reporting on the Middle East, East Africa and South Asia.

What can we learn from 2025 and how should we face into the year ahead. Joe Whitfield-Seed of Ripjar has answers.

The Bank of Scotland has been fined £160,000 (US$219,000) by the UK's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) over processing 24 payments totalling UK£77,383 (US$106,000) for a sanctioned Russian, with the agency stressing the error highlighted the weaknesses of its automated and human sanctions screening.

The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA - Finanstilsynet) has fined Saxo Bank, a leading lender in the Nordics, DKK313 million (US$49.8 million) for anti-money laundering failings, notably in relation to 'white label' banking transactions.

The ability to find out who owns or controls a company, wherever in the world, may be far off but countries are gradually legislating and implementing greater transparency, if unevenly, some reluctantly. MLB correspondents Sara Lewis, in Brussels; Keith Nuthall, in Ottawa; and Raghavendra Verma, in New Delhi check on availability and access to beneficial ownership data in a wide range of jurisdictions.

Tensions are rising with US military build-up in the Gulf, following the Iranian regime's latest crushing of popular protests, over escalating prices, the product of decades of toughening international sanctions. That economic hostility shows no sign of abating, reports Paul Cochrane, as the US and EU make further designations and the United Nations triggers the snap-back process over lack of access to the country's nuclear facilities.

Financial firms in the European Union are starting to comply with new guidelines from the European Banking Authority (EBA) regarding their sanctions-related systems and controls. Many are struggling: Chris Hamblin looks into why.

It's the message that all AMLers, whether law enforcers or in compliance, learn. And it's surely right, as criminals are, by and large, motivated by enjoying that which isn't theirs: in tracing stolen funds, there's a good chance of catching the bad guys.

From initial focus on money in illegal narcotics, the AML project has evolved and expanded over the last four decades to cover the proceeds of many more predicate crimes and a growing range of reporting sectors - but is it achieving anything worthwhile? In a wide-ranging discussion, Jim Richards, frontline AML veteran and close observer of the financial crime scene, talks to Paul Cochrane about priorities, resource allocation, jeopardy and impact across private and public sectors, why he likes rules, would ban crypto ATMs and puts a question mark over the risk-based approach.