FIN.

Treasury publishes AML supervision report

Treasury has published its AML and CTF supervision report for 2017-18. The report highlights the UK’s FATF evaluation report – which it notes recognises the UK regime as the strongest assessed to date.  But Treasury acknowledges that FATF found areas for improvement, and is committed to improving consistency and quality of compliance and supervision outside the mainstream financial services sector.

The report also looks at how Treasury develops its approach, the methods used by supervisors and methods to promote and ensure compliance. It also looks at enforcement action across supervisors, noting low levels of activity from the professional body supervisors. HMRC has used its powers to withdraw or suspend registration in nearly 800 cases and imposed 655 fines.  FCA used its s166 power 11 times in relation to AML during the period although no fines were published (the Standard Chartered fine was after the reporting period). The Gambling Commission made 231 referrals to law enforcement and imposed fines of over £6 million.

Emma Radmore