MAS issues guidance paper on “Effective Practices to Detect and Mitigate the Risk from Misuse of Legal Persons”

30 July 2019

On 25 June 2019, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”) issued a guidance paper on “Effective Practices to Detect and Mitigate the Risk from Misuse of Legal Persons”.

This guidance paper sets out MAS’ supervisory expectations of financial institutions’ (“FIs”) anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (“AML/CFT”) controls to address the misuse of legal persons risks and typologies observed. It also summarises the key findings from MAS’ thematic AML/CFT inspections targeted at assessing the effectiveness of banks’ controls in mitigating risks from the misuse of legal persons. The guidance paper also sets out illustrative case examples and best practices observed from the inspections.

While the guidance paper is derived from MAS’ banking inspection findings, MAS states that the key findings would be relevant and applicable to other FIs with the appropriate modifications. FIs should therefore study and incorporate learning points from this guidance in a risk-based and proportionate manner, having regard to the profile of their business activities and customers.

Reference materials

The following materials are available from the MAS website www.mas.gov.sg:

 

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