Network of Anti-Corruption Specialists

The Sixth Annual ACAMS Anti-Money Laundering & Counter-Terrorism Financing Conference took place in Amsterdam from 7 – 8 June 2010. The conference aimed to raise awareness among participants of the most advanced money laundering and fraud schemes and update the audience on the latest European and International Anti-Money Laundering Regulations, and in particular the Third EU Directive. 250 participants from the financial sector attended. Jos de Wit and Thomas Kerscher gave presentations on behalf of the Anti Corruption Network on best practices in combatting corruption and bribery. The conference agenda can be downloaded here, further information can be obtained at www.amleurope.org.

UniCredit Bank Austria was sentenced to pay 240 million euros ($321 million) to the German government in a court case involving assets of the former East German Communist Party (SED). The Zurich District Court of Appeal on March 25 ruled in favor of the German government in a lawsuit that accuses UniCredit Bank Austria AG’s former AKB Privatbank Zuerich unit of helping to embezzle funds from companies in the former East Germany, Vienna-based Bank Austria said yesterday in a statement. The court reversed an initial ruling of the Zurich District Court, which had rejected Germany’s claim. When the case went to court in 1994, Germany said that the bank helped launder 250 million deutsche marks ($171.5 million) that vanished from the accounts of two former East German trading companies after communism fell. Germany said that the funds were East German state assets that AKB helped shift to the Austria Communist Party in the 1990s after German reunification.

“Know your customer and know their transactions”  are some of the key words within the financial services industry.  Knowledge of your customers and their transactions is necessary to assure compliance with international/national rules and regulations to discover and report money laundering, terrorist finance corruption, fraud etc. Financial institutions all over the world struggle to know and understand what their customers are doing and accordingly implement systems and procedures to satisfy their regulators. This seeks to avoid that their banking operations will be used for money laundering and other forms of financial economic crime. However in practice it is extremely difficult for financial institution to monitor all their customer activities and transaction.  World leading banks serve millions of customers with million transactions a day, and especially for smaller institutions, it is practically impossible to implement a 100 % CDD system (Customer Due Diligence). Institutions and their regulators understand that a risk based approach to anti money laundering can the main solution for the financial service industry to manage the risks of their services being misused for money laundering and related illicit activities. Read the rest of this entry →