europos has been selected to be part of the Lord Mayor of London’s technology delegation to Eastern Europe. We are excited to be flying the flag for UK RegTech in the Czech Republic and Poland from the 27-28th June. Central…
Is HSBC Stopping Terrorist Money Laundering? Whistleblower Urges Federal Reserve to Reopen $1.9 billion Settlement
In 2012, HSBC paid a record $1.9 billion fine to settle money-laundering accusations. Yet in a letter to the Federal Reserve, which he publicised this September, ex-employee Everett Stern (among a number of other weighty allegations) accused HSBC of ongoing…
The Fourth AML Directive: Filling the Silence
Although the Fourth Anti Money Laundering Directive is now “set in stone”, the UK does still have some degree of flexibility in how it implements the European requirements. This was what the Head of Financial Crime at the FCA (Rob…
Money in Terrorist Hands: What FinTech Firms Should Fear
It recently emerged that online lender Prosper made a $28,500 collateral-free loan to Syed Rizwan Farook in mid-November, just a few weeks before he and his wife massacred guests at an office holiday party in San Bernardino, with Federal Officials…
The Inclusion of Financial crime as an FCA major risk factor
On the 24th of March 2015 the FCA released their business plan for the year. A notable aspect of the plan was financial crime replacing house price growth as a top risk consideration. Additionally, the FCA placed a special focus…
MSB bank accounts: the global retrenchment
How can a money service business acquire a bank account? There is a wide-spread de-risking currently occurring amongst banks. In this article, we assess the range of phenomena that are occurring around the world, including how relevant regulators have responded…
Fincen: Sanity Required Over Wholesale Termination of MSB Accounts
Fincen yesterday issued a statement regarding the extent to which banks should terminate the accounts of MSB’s. The statement declared: MSBs play an important role in a transparent financial system, particularly because they often provide financial services to people less…
Is searching OFAC enough?
At the time of writing, the OFAC SDN list contains 5,466 entities. This list proscribes the entities that on a statutory basis, companies and individuals can not deal with. However, it is apparent that regulators and counter-parties alike do not consider this enough….