The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) held a meeting with relevant industry groups and discussed ways to bolster anti-money laundering (AML) efforts in transborder crimes on November 24. Today’s meeting was organized with aims to establish a more effective and rigorous response system on money laundering that has links to the transborder crimes targeting domestic citizens from abroad.

At the meeting, officials reviewed the current transborder AML response situation in the banking sector and discussed the role of the government and financial companies to further strengthen AML efforts in transborder crimes.

First, in cooperation with financial companies, the KoFIU will analyze suspicious transaction types linked to transborder crimes, and financial companies will report every suspicious transaction deemed to be linked to transborder crime to the KoFIU. Last week, the KoFIU and the banking sector conducted an analysis on certain types of suspicious transactions and discussed a standard for extracting and sorting out similar types. These suspicious transaction reports (STR) from banks and nonbanks will be thoroughly analyzed by the KoFIU for the identification and detection of criminal activities by investigation authorities.

Second, the KoFIU will strengthen internal control on AML activities of financial companies. A recent inspection by the Financial Supervisory Service revealed inadequacies in the management and supervision of AML activities for banks’ overseas branches and subsidiaries. Thus, the KoFIU plans to bolster internal control on AML activities of financial companies by requiring them to more rigorously perform customer due diligence (CDD) on suspicious customers and having them prioritize on-site inspections on their branches and subsidiaries located in Southeast Asia. When making periodic inspections on financial companies’ AML activities in the future, the KoFIU will more thoroughly look into their handling of overseas branches and subsidiaries.

Third, the KoFIU will work to strengthen cooperation with overseas counterparts (foreign FIUs) to facilitate the sharing of financial transactions information, while making continuous efforts to seek regulatory improvements to be able to more effectively respond to transborder crimes.

* Please refer to the attached PDF for details.