Singapore fines Credit Suisse, local bank

The Monetary Authority of Singapore said on Tuesday it had fined Credit Suisse and a local bank for breaches in anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and control lapses.

These were revealed during an investigation into a corruption case related to Malaysia's state investment fund, reports Efe.

The financial regulator said it had fined $504,000 on Credit Suisse and around $648,000 on United Overseas Bank (UOB) for breaching anti-money laundering rules for transactions linked to Malaysia's scandal-ridden state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The fines were imposed following a two-year review, which found that both banks had carried out inadequate supervision of clients' activities and operations, the regulator said in a statement.

The monetary authority has closed down two private foreign banks and imposed sanctions on another six, aside from UOB and Credit Suisse, for not abiding by anti-money laundering laws.

Sanctions imposed on banks operating in Singapore amount to a total of $20.9 million.

The regulator has also imposed financial prohibition orders against three former and current employees of the financial institutions and said it intends to take action against three others.

Credit Suisse said it was aware of the outcome of the review and regretted it neither met its own standards nor those of the regulator.

UOB also accepted the outcome and said it has started to take measures to address the concerned issues.

Besides Singapore, five other countries, including the US and Switzerland, are also investigating the banking movements of 1MBD, which was created to enrich the Malaysian public treasury and accrued a debt of 42 billion ringgit ($9.8 billion) in 2014.

In 2015, a newspaper investigation revealed that $681 million from 1MDB was diverted to personal accounts belonging to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who founded the fund in 2009.

Najib and 1MDB denied to the allegations and an investigation by the Malaysian prosecutor's office exonerated the Prime Minister in January 2016.

--IANS

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