Asia-Pacific regulators issued nearly $4 billion of fines related to anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) violations in the first half of 2020 according to a report by software provider Fenergo.
A big chunk of this came from Malaysia, where regulators issued two of the highest value enforcement actions in 2020 so far. They reached a settlement with Goldman Sachs over the 1MDB scandal that included a $2.5 billion penalty and the guaranteed return of $1.4 billion in assets.
Fenergo’s report covered Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, India and Pakistan, apart from Malaysia. Among them, Pakistan saw the steepest rise in fines compared to the first half of last year (845 percent), followed by Hong Kong (223 percent) and Taiwan (116 percent).
The report adds that the increase in fines resulted from heightened enforcement actions in response to recent Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) criticisms and concerns highlighted in mutual evaluation reports.
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