The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has imposed a fine of S$2.5m on Swiss-Asia Financial Services (SAFS) for breaches of MAS’ anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) rules.
MAS said in a statement on 7 May that it also issued a reprimand to SAFS’ chief executive officer (CEO), Olivier Pascal Mivelaz, and its chief operating officer (COO), Steve Knabl, for failing to discharge their duties and functions of ensuring that SAFS complied with MAS’ AML/CFT requirements.
Loo Siew Yee, assistant managing director (Policy, Payments & Financial Crime), MAS, said: “Financial institutions (FIs) providing wealth management services to high net worth individuals must take commensurate measures to mitigate heightened ML/TF risks.
"The boards and senior management of FIs are expected to put in place adequate AML/CFT controls, actively oversee the implementation of the controls, and ensure that compliance and internal audit functions are working effectively and keeping pace with the FI’s business growth.”
Between September 2015 to October 2018, SAFS, a wealth and fund management company, experienced significant growth in its business.
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 SAFS to the risk of financial crime. The breaches uncovered during MAS’ inspection included the following:
MAS also issued a reprimand to Mivelaz and Knabl for failing to discharge their respective duties and functions of their offices as CEO and COO to ensure that SAFS complied with MAS’ AML/CFT requirements.
In particular, they had approved the inadequate EWRA. They also failed, over a period of four years, to ensure that regular internal audits were carried out to assess the effectiveness of SAFS’ AML/CFT controls in view of the company’s significant business growth during that time.
SAFS has taken the necessary remedial actions to address the deficiencies identified by MAS.
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