HONG KONG: The Hong Kong Monetary Authority on Friday fined local wing of Singapore’s DBS Bank with $1.3 million for violating its anti-money laundering law, the banking regulator said.
The HKMA said the bank failed to constantly monitor business relationships and carry out enhanced due diligence in high-risk situations over a seven-year time.
The investigation found control deficiencies and also failure to keep records for some of DBS Bank customers stipulated by the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance, the regulator in a statement said.
Parent group DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, was among lenders caught in a billion-dollar money-laundering case in Singapore last year.
Under the regulations, banks are required to have effective customer due diligence measures to fight money laundering and terrorist financing and those measures should be reviewed regularly, said Raymond Chan, an executive director at HKMA.
DBS Hong Kong in a statement said that it accepted the HKMA’s decision and takes anti-money laundering obligations very seriously.
“The issues at hand were sporadic and historical in nature, having occurred between April 2012 and April 2019,” it said.
DBS Hong Kong says it has been working with regulators to enhance anti-money laundering controls and has implemented different policies that improved its capabilities to detect money laundering issues.
