Credit Suisse the local bank at Singapore has been fined

Singapore, May 30: Singapore's Monetary Authority paid credit to Susisse and local banks for violating in anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and regulatory shortcomings on Tuesday. This Efe reports during a criminal investigation into the state investment fund of Malaysia. The financial regulator said it had fined $504,000 on Credit Suisse and around $648,000 on United Overseas Bank (UOB) for breaching anti-money laundering rules for transactions linked to Malaysia's scandal-ridden state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The fines were imposed following a two-year review, which found that both banks had carried out inadequate supervision of clients' activities and operations, the regulator said in a statement. The monetary authority has closed down two private foreign banks and imposed sanctions on another six, aside from UOB and Credit Suisse, for not abiding by anti-money laundering laws. Sanctions imposed on banks operating in Singapore amount to a total of $20.9 million.

The financial regulatory orders also issued an order against three former and current employees of financial institutions and demanded action against three other individuals. Credit Suisse said it was aware of the outcome of the review and regretted it neither met its own standards nor those of the regulator. UOB also accepted the outcome and said it has started to take measures to address the concerned issues.

Besides Singapore, five other countries, including the US and Switzerland, are also investigating the banking movements of 1MBD, which was created to enrich the Malaysian public treasury and accrued a debt of 42 billion ringgit ($9.8 billion) in 2014. In 2015, a newspaper survey was diverted to personal accounts of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razz who founded the Fund in 2009 from 1MDB to $ 681 million.  Najib and 1MDB denied the allegations and the Malaysian prosecutor's office dismissed the prime minister in January 2016.