Statement from Kompli-Global (Jane Jee, CEO): “In the latest scandal to hit the banking sector and severely tarnish the UK’s reputation as an ethical place to do business, leaked documents, involving about $2tn of transactions, have revealed how some of the world's biggest banks have allowed criminals to move dirty money around the world. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released files over the weekend that were mainly Suspicious Activity Reports filed with a U.S. Treasury Department agency known as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN”.

“The FinCEN files reveal  that banks have severely come up short through sanctions evading, failing to carry out proper Customer Due Diligence (CDD) aka  Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, ignoring publicly available evidence of wrongdoing by clients and failing  to block accounts where there was clear  suspicious activity.  The UK is called a "higher risk jurisdiction" and compared to Cyprus, by the intelligence division of FinCEN. Over 3,000 UK companies are named in the FinCEN files - more than any other country.”

“Therefore now, more than ever, it is time for a step change in how the government, industry and regulators tackle money laundering, especially as the technology is available to prevent these scandals. Regulated entities no longer have an excuse not to take effective action to comply with AML and related legislation. It’s time for the industry to step up and take charge – it’s not just their own profits and reputation they are risking, it’s the safety and stability of the communities around them as well –financial crime wrecks lives.”

* Jane Jee is CEO at Kompli-Global. After qualifying as a barrister, Jane worked in commercial and legal roles in compliance, credit and payments. She was Managing Director at Access credit cards and a Director at Worldpay Plc. In 2014 Jane obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Governance, Risk and Compliance from the International Compliance Association (ICA). She is a Fellow of the ICA and teaches a Masterclass on “The Future of Payments” on the ICA post-graduate course. Jane passionately believes that good compliance makes good business sense. A thorough knowledge of your customer enables you to retain their business and potentially better target your offerings.

* About Kompli-Global - Kompli-Global is a RegTech enterprise bridging the information gap in an increasingly regulated and digital world. It uses digital technologies to reveal hard-to-detect and suppressed adverse information, facilitating regulatory compliance that may otherwise be time-consuming, expensive and ineffective. A truly global company, Kompli-Global has an advisory community present in 66 countries covering 158 regions. This is a worldwide network of compliance experts stationed locally in key positions across the globe.