Fasu close to complete compliance checks on BSP

The National Business

By SHIRLEY MAULUDU
THE Financial Analysis and Supervision Unit (Fasu) has completed about 90 per cent of its work in the BSP Fincial Group (BSP), its acting director Wilson Onea says.
“BSP has been cooperative after it was issued with a notice of non-compliance relating to money laundering in July,” he added.
Onea said investigations had identified the issues followed by three enforcement actions.
“BSP has cooperated with us to address the identified deficiencies and are dealing with them.
“Investigations have been completed.
“It is the implementation of the actions that we wanted BSP to action and they are into it,” he told The National.
Fasu, a unit of Bank of Papua New Guinea, issued a notice to BSP in July highlighting regulatory actions it was taking against the bank after an onsite inspection of BSP.
According to Fasu, the inspection tested:

  • BSP’s level of compliance with various sections of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing Act 2015 (AML/CTF Act) and its own AML/CTF programme; and,
  • BSP’s effectiveness in implementing its procedures, policies and/or controls to complying with its enhanced customer due diligence obligations particularly when dealing with high-risk customers. It did so by examining the customer files pertaining to eight “high-risk” BSP customers.

In December, BSP admitted that it failed to conduct effective enhanced customer due diligence reviews and that there were compliance gaps in its AML/CTF programme.
BSP group chief executive Robin Fleming in a statement then said: “In response to Fasu’s formal warning, BSP has amended its AML/CTF Policy, conducted training on the Criminal Code Act and delivered an ECDD Plan to Fasu by the date required.
“An external auditor has also been appointed under Section 10 of the AML/CTF Act for an initial six months. Its independent audit commenced on Nov 15,” he added.
Onea said: “Those enforcement actions were targeted at changing the culture in BSP and for them to be very receptive to compliance. So far we have been receiving the cooperation.”