SINGAPORE — The number of suspicious transaction reports has almost doubled between 2012 and last year, according to the annual report of the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD).
In 2012, there were 17,975 reports made to the Suspicious Transaction Reporting Office (STRO), the CAD unit which receives and analyses reports of suspicious financial transactions.
The figure spiked to 29,082 in 2014 and 30,511 last year.
CAD said the increase “reflects the vigilance of reporting entities and a higher level” of awareness here about anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing efforts.
Among the reports filed last year, about a third, or 10,080, came from the banks, while 6,737 and 6,645 reports came from casinos, and money-changers/remittance agents respectively.
CASE
- One of the money-laundering cases brought before the court last year involved a woman, Loh Yen Lyng, who had accepted a “job offer”, posted on the Internet, of receiving and transferring funds.
- The person who offered her the job claimed that the funds were meant for a charity.
- Loh was told that she would retain a certain amount of the funds each time she received them in her Singapore bank account.
- The STRO was alerted to Loh’s activities in April 2013 after it received a report about a suspicious transaction, filed by a bank, on her corporate bank account in Singapore.
- The report noted that Loh’s account had received about S$114,349 from a victim’s bank account in Turks and Caicos Islands, a British overseas territory south-east of the Bahamas.
- Although Loh subsequently failed to transfer a bulk of the funds to a bank account in China, she managed to send about S$102,000 to a bank account in Hong Kong.
- For her money-laundering offences, Loh was sentenced to nine months’ jail in March 2015.
The rise in the number of reports made to the STRO came as Singapore stepped up its efforts against money-laundering and terrorist financing activities in recent years.
These include criminalising the laundering of serious tax offences and stepping up inspections of financial institutions.
Mr Michael Scully, senior deputy director of the CAD’s Intelligence Group and Corporate Services Group, noted that the STRO not only works with the different stakeholders here, but also collaborates with its foreign counterparts.
Apart from sharing reports of suspicious transactions, the STRO has also concluded various agreements with its partners in several countries.
“Such agreements allow for the effective cooperation between the STRO and its foreign counterparts, which is pivotal in the fight against transnational crime,” said Mr Scully.
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