Compliance
Pursuant to the Financial Intelligence and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2002 (FIAMLA), the FIU is the designated Regulatory body for ‘Dealers in jewellery, precious stones or precious metals’, ‘Real Estate Agents, including Land Promoters and Property Developers’, ‘Attorneys’, ‘Barristers’, ‘Notaries’, and ‘Law firms’, ‘foreign law firms’, ‘joint law ventures’ and ‘foreign lawyers’, under the Law Practitioners Act.
The department within the FIU that acts as AML/CFT Regulatory Body for the reporting persons under its purview, is the FIU Compliance Division. The Compliance Division has been structured in a way to cater for four different aspects which are interlinked, and which cover the whole supervisory role of the FIU namely assistance, risk assessment, assessment and enforcement. To perform these functions, the Compliance Division is split into units, as outlined below.
The Supervision Unit ensures monitoring of AML/CFT compliance by reporting persons carrying out relevant activities as stipulated by FIAMLA.
The main role of the Supervision Unit is to identify and measure the ML/TF risks faced by reporting persons and guide them through adherence to AML/CFT obligations.
Supervisory actions are carried out through on-site inspections, off-site monitoring and regular follow-up examinations. As new ways of work have begun to stem around the world, the Supervisory Team has initiated desk-based and virtual inspections to ease the monitoring function.
The role of the Enforcement Unit is to determine the administrative measures necessary in relation to identified AML/CFT breaches, and to subsequently ensure that the failures identified are remediated. The enforcement team is responsible to address non-compliance with legislative & regulatory requirements.
The responsibilities of the Enforcement Unit encompass the application of enforcement action for AML/CFT breaches identified through the conduct of compliance examinations by the Supervision Unit. The Enforcement Unit is also actively involved in carrying out follow-up actions to ensure remediation action by subject persons following the determination of AML/CFT breaches.
The Relations & Support Unit is mainly focused on ensuring support is provided to regulatees and general public. Assistance is provided using various channels.
The Unit also provides support in conducting outreach activities for reporting persons. This allows for better assistance in performing their AML/CFT obligations and ensures that reporting persons are at all times updated about the ML/TF risks that they face.
In addition to this, the team also coordinates various AML/CFT training which target participation of FIU officers. This enables officers to be constantly up-to-date with AML/CFT developments.
The Research & Analysis Unit collects and analyses information gathered from regulatees to assess their respective ML/TF risks as well as the risks of the supervised sectors.
The Unit is also responsible for monitoring the quality of the data received from regulatees.
In addition, the Unit conducts research on various developments in the AML/CFT space to make sure regulatees are aware of the risks and developments that are present in their lines of business.