MAS fines investment firm S$1.9 million for making big customer transactions without adequate checks

THE Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued a penalty of S$1.9 million to Atrium Asia Investment Management (AAIM) for breaching the central bank’s anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) requirements.

Specifically, MAS said AAIM had processed several “suspicious and unusually large” customer transactions with third parties without taking adequate steps to verify the purported relationships between them. 

The company had also failed to implement appropriate internal procedures to determine if business relations with customers presented a higher risk of money laundering or terrorism financing, MAS said on Tuesday (Oct 29).

The central bank said it also issued a reprimand to the investment company’s chief executive, Mintarja Oei, for failing to ensure the company’s compliance with such requirements.

“MAS found that AAIM’s key breaches are attributable to Mr Oei, as CEO of AAIM, failing to ensure that AAIM’s compliance with MAS’ AML/CFT requirements,” it said.

The central bank’s move comes after its inspection of the company found AAIM’s internal policy and procedures to be inadequate at the material time.

This led to multiple breaches of the AML/CFT requirements from June 2015 to 2020, thus putting the firm “at risk of being misused for financial crime”.

Other breaches of the requirements included the company’s failure to identify several customers to be politically exposed persons.

It also failed to record the identities of several customers’ beneficial owners (BOs) and keep up-to-date documents to verify the said BOs’ identities.

MAS noted that AAIM has since taken remedial actions to address the identified deficiencies.

According to its website, the firm invests in both public and private securities, mainly in Indonesia and Singapore. It is a subsidiary of Singapore-based boutique investment firm Atrium Asia Capital Partners.