Financial regulator sets up anti-money laundering squad

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Latvia's Financial and Capital Markets Commission (FKTK) announced Thursday it was setting up a new department specifically to deal with anti-money laundering efforts.

"A new structural unit, Compliance Control Department, has been set up... The new FKTK department will perform supervision of financial and capital market participants focusing on the prevention of laundering the proceeds from criminal activity and of terrorist financing, develop regulatory framework in this scope, as well as ensure compliance with the national and international sanctions requirements," the announcement said. 

"It is very important that we are controlling this area of the financial sector with the relevant resources and at a high professional level,'' FKTK Chairman Peters Putnins said.

"Everybody knows that dealing with non-resident cash flows is a significant part of Latvia’s financial sector and it is a high-risk business. The FCMC's goal is that the participants of Latvia's market are operating with transparent cash flows and do not pose any risk for the country’s reputation. It is also a matter of the national security. The focus of this department will be on analytical work, including information processing data both obtained during regular inspections and through other signals.

This is a structure that will efficiently deal with information, identifying potential illegal money schemes and afterwards other colleagues will decide on the relevant actions, including initiating administrative cases. We will strengthen this process with appropriate IT solutions as well."

The new Compliance Control Department (CCD) will have five divisions: the Banking Supervision Division, the Non-Banking Supervision Division, the Transactions Monitoring Division, the Legislative and Regulatory Division and the Sanctions and Compliance Division. 

Initially, there were 9 employees in the CCD; however, there are 15 posts planned this year and recruitment of the staff still continues. It is expected that the number of employees in the CCD will reach 20 in the first half of 2017. 

With the most recent revelations about alleged money-laundering among Latvian banks appearing on the same day as FKTK's announcement (and the same day Latvia's Saeima ratified membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the new employees will not be short of work.

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