Sri Lanka’s regulator for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT), the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) imposed financial penalties on Union Bank of Colombo PLC and DFCC Bank PLC for non-compliance with the provisions of the Financial Transactions Reporting Act, No. 06 of 2006 (FTRA), No. 1 of 2016 in the first second of the year (2021), the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) announced.
“Penalties were imposed mainly on the violations of Financial Institutions (Customer Due Diligence) Rules, No. 1 of 2016 in relation to the United Nations sanctions screening, ongoing scrutiny of transactions undertaken throughout the course of the business relationship with a customer, establishing and maintaining procedures and systems to ensure the process of monitoring and implementing proper risk controls and mitigation measures.,” the CBSL said in a statement.
The FIU recently warned the country’s financial institutes on an increasing trend of suspicious withdrawals via ATMs·in Overseas and it advised FIs to perform Customer Due Diligence measures as required by the Financial
Institutions (Customer Due Diligence) Rules, No. 1 of 2016 at the time of onboarding the customer and when conducting transactions.
Accordingly, Union Bank and DFCC Bank were fined Rs. 2 million and Rs. 1 million in the quarter.
Kanrich Finance and Commercial Bank faced similar financial penalties in the first quarter. The money collected as penalties were credited to the Consolidated Fund.