Compliance Corner: Atrium Asia Investment Management, MAS

Editorial Staff

30 October 2024

Atrium Asia Investment Management
The has imposed a composition penalty of S$1.9 million ($1.43 million) on for breaching the regulator’s anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) requirements.

The watchdog has reprimanded AAIM’s CEO, Mintarja Oei, for failing to ensure AAIM’s compliance with MAS’ AML/CFT requirements, it said in a statement yesterday.

The regulator said that AAIM has since taken remedial actions to address the deficiencies that have been identified.

An inspection of AAIM by the regulator found that the company’s internal policy and procedures at the material time were inadequate. This led to several breaches of MAS’ AML/CFT requirements from June 2015 to October 2020.

The breaches included AAIM’s failure to:

-- Implement adequate processes to detect and report suspicious and unusually large customer transactions with third parties;
-- Implement appropriate internal procedures to determine if business relations with customers presented a higher risk of ML/TF;
-- Implement appropriate internal risk management systems and procedures to determine if customers and related persons were politically exposed persons (PEPs) or close associates of PEPs; and
-- Implement adequate internal procedures to keep records of documents and information that AAIM was required to obtain from customers to meet AML/CFT requirements.

MAS said the key breaches are attributable to Oei who, as CEO, failed to ensure that the firm complied with the regulator’s AML/CFT requirements. MAS has therefore issued a reprimand to Oei.