Post by dracon on Aug 16, 2021 21:16:40 GMT 4
The FIAU has fined the Maltese subsidiary of Swiss money transfer brand Sendvalu a total of €502,000 for money laundering breaches.
The company, AWS Malta, is owned by AWS Switzerland, and its Maltese directors include Jean-Pie Gauci-Maistre of Gauci-Maistre Xynou law firm, chief financial officer Steven Zammit Cutajar, and Mark Portelli, of Virtu Shipping and CEO of MIDI plc.
The FIAU found several breaches of due diligence and a lack of information on the company’s customer files. In a significant number – 84% of the sample – of customer files reviewed, the company had failed to collect adequate information on the purpose and intended nature of the business relationship, which is required to establish an adequate customer business and risk profile.
The FIAU said the company failed to undertake appropriate enhanced due diligence measures in instances clearly posing a high money laundering risk. In one file relating to a Sri Lankan national actively transacting since January 2017, the company only requested EDD information three years after Sri Lanka was listed on the FATF’s high-risk jurisdictions, well after over 220 transactions passed through. The customer then stopped all transactions after the company requested EDD.
In another case, over a period of three and a half years, a customer remitted a total of 1,096 transactions to the Philippines amounting to $402,450 and €24,000. The stated purpose of remittance was to aid the customer’s Philippine friends for medical assistance, to purchase a new phone, to assist in setting up a beauty salon, and other purchases of services and goods.
The customer’s stated source of funds was a monthly pension and a personal line of credit. But the FIAU said further documentation should have been collected, to have better insight into the source funding such transactions, as well as to ascertain the veracity of the remittances.
The company, AWS Malta, is owned by AWS Switzerland, and its Maltese directors include Jean-Pie Gauci-Maistre of Gauci-Maistre Xynou law firm, chief financial officer Steven Zammit Cutajar, and Mark Portelli, of Virtu Shipping and CEO of MIDI plc.
The FIAU found several breaches of due diligence and a lack of information on the company’s customer files. In a significant number – 84% of the sample – of customer files reviewed, the company had failed to collect adequate information on the purpose and intended nature of the business relationship, which is required to establish an adequate customer business and risk profile.
The FIAU said the company failed to undertake appropriate enhanced due diligence measures in instances clearly posing a high money laundering risk. In one file relating to a Sri Lankan national actively transacting since January 2017, the company only requested EDD information three years after Sri Lanka was listed on the FATF’s high-risk jurisdictions, well after over 220 transactions passed through. The customer then stopped all transactions after the company requested EDD.
In another case, over a period of three and a half years, a customer remitted a total of 1,096 transactions to the Philippines amounting to $402,450 and €24,000. The stated purpose of remittance was to aid the customer’s Philippine friends for medical assistance, to purchase a new phone, to assist in setting up a beauty salon, and other purchases of services and goods.
The customer’s stated source of funds was a monthly pension and a personal line of credit. But the FIAU said further documentation should have been collected, to have better insight into the source funding such transactions, as well as to ascertain the veracity of the remittances.