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It's going to cost ANZ about AUD5 million to compensate victims of the scheme that operated through the bank's Esanda car finance business. That's just part of what ASIC describes as "a package of regulatory actions against Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ)" But there's an anomaly of the kind that excites our colleagues on the financial crime publications group of PleaseBeInformed. But we got to this one first! Even more, the story looks like a simple management failure but on closer inspection it demonstrates a fundamental lack of attention to the most basic money laundering / terrorist financing KYC/CDD requirements. ASIC may think it's over. AUSTRAC needs to take a look.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has licensed the first crowd-sourced funding (CSF) intermediaries under the new CSF regime.

IN an order issued today, the Securities Commission of Malaysia has ordered CopyCash Foundation to cease and desist from all commercial activities, including an ICO planned for tomorrow (10th January 2018)

Kuala Lumpur, 5 January 2018
Media Statement on Initial Coin Offerings

Following a public statement released on 7 September 2017 regarding Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) has noticed an increase in activities by new ICOs to solicit investments in crypto-currencies from the public at large, including senior citizens.

In this article, Ajay Shamdasani , Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence, takes soundings on what might be expected from the FATF's Mutual Examination of Hong Kong, the results of which are expected soon.

There are many countries around the world where the numerical value of the currency is so high that even the smallest purchases are calculated in thousands. To be a millionaire may mean having less than the equivalent of USD100 in your pocket. While official inflation may be low, unofficial inflation, from rounding up or, even, simply inflating unpublished prices, can have a startling effect on costs. And, of course, in environments where cash is the normal means of settlement, creates a profit that is secret from victims and, even, from employers and Revenue officials. But countries are reluctant to redefine their currencies. Why?

The Dubai Financial Services Authority and ASIC yesterday signed a Cooperation Agreement which provides a framework for cooperation to support and understand financial innovation in each jurisdiction.

How many tags can we add to this article? LexTech (as in legal technology)?, LegalTech? FinTech, contracting? Cloudflare? DNS Laundering? ICO? Regulation? If nothing else, the story is a warning to regulators to stop and think: are they really doing it right or just being swept along on a wave of other people's self-interest and enthusiasm?

Confido described itself as "using smart contracts with a unique shipment tracking feature." The idea was that it would become a trusted third party (remember that term from the early days of internet payments? It's still useful) as, in effect, an escrow holder. In fact, what the company was offering was far more prosaic:

The Australian Financial Services (AFS) Licence of a financial adviser in Brisbane was cancelled yesterday but the announcement was made first thing this morning Sydney time . Today, at least one LinkedIn profile says that the company holds an AFS licence proving that social media and due diligence are not good bedfellows. The case also shows that penalties for failure to comply with orders by regulators to undertake more effective management can have serious repercussions.

When internet security is talked about, it's usually either that someone is trying to sell you something, or something has gone wrong in the biggest possible way.

But it's all OK for your bank, etc. isn't it. After all, you trust your systems to Amazon's AWS cloud service and if anyone's got internet security taped, it's going to be Amazon.

Right?

Wrong......

One has to ask what took so long.. after American regulators and prosecutors began attacking European banks for failures in the USA European regulators remained surprisingly reticent about taking action against foreign banks, especially American banks. While it may not be blowback (US banks have long gone their own way in London, as have German and Japanese banks but there have been occasional action against those) it is certainly time that US banks were not treated as a special case. In the latest example, Merrill Lynch has been ordered to pay a penalty that, relative to the scale of the failure and corresponding penalties in the USA, seems relatively small.

We've been here before, or have we? Just six weeks ago was the tenth anniversary of the USA listing Banco Delta Asia of Macau and Hong Kong as being "of primary money laundering concern." But there was scant evidence of wrongdoing by BCA and what there was turned out to be largely made up. Is the Bank of Dandong, a mainland Chinese bank, any more culpable or is the USA back on the track of weapons of monetary destruction that don't really exist?

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which also has a regulatory function, has applied a USD3 million civil money penalty against Lone Star National Bank of Pharr, Texas, for failing to properly comply with the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act - as found in s312 of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Financial adviser Drew Grosskreutz of Queensland, Australia, has been banned from providing financial services for three years, says ASIC

A thread on Linked-In raises the question of why the opportunity to join in the class action announced against Commonwealth Bank of Australia is not available to many shareholders. Here's a simplified guide to class actions - and why the CBA case bears more than a passing resemblance to a shareholder action against The Bank of New York.