Sanctions and AML Insights

Trade compliance is the processes and procedures by which goods enter and exit a country in adherence to relevant laws, regulations and other requirements of the countries from which the goods are being imported or exported. This incorporates many aspects of international trading, including training, classification, trade risk, import duties and taxes, certifications, and country-specific import licensing and approvals.

In today’s complex regulatory environments, businesses have to be careful about who they have business dealings with. Enhanced Due Diligence is an advanced KYC due diligence process that provides additional risk investigation into high-risk customers or large transactions. Knowing your customers’ past and present business dealings and their links to high-risk countries or entities can significantly lower a business’ risk of regulatory fines and other penalties.

Anti-Money Laundering refers to the laws, regulations and procedures aimed at uncovering the efforts unscrupulous parties may make to disguise illicit funds as legitimate income. Here are just a few of the terms you should know when it comes to AML Compliance:

Name Matching is the "real hard nut to crack" in AML / Sanctions compliance. While Fuzzy Algorithms can help with some of the real world challenges like typos, incomplete strings etc. some issues like transliteration issues, nicknames, spelling differences can't be mitigated with any fuzzy algorithm. The results are either an overload of false positives or, even worse, false negatives. sanctions.io's new name matching technology solves these challenges by blending machine learning with a set of traditional name matching approaches. Learn more about different approaches and technologies for name matching problems in this article.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was established in July 1989 to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Today, more than 200 countries follow their recommendations and AML standards. As part of their mandate to curb financial crime, the FATF blacklists countries that have been identified as being inadequate in their counter-financing of terrorist regimes or anti-money-laundering practices. This list is sometimes called the FATF AML deficient list. Before countries are blacklisted, they are placed on a greylist to first address identified strategic shortcomings as well as the agreed time frames for remediation. This article will explore the differences between blacklists and greylists in greater detail, as well as how to remain compliant.

Cyber sanctions are a fairly new addition to the global regulatory environment, but they are increasingly important. These sanctions work in a similar fashion to traditional sanctions. They are designed to restrict transactions, trade and commercial connections with individuals and organizations that are suspected of carrying out cyber-enabled assaults.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Economic Sanctions have been in the spotlight for the last couple of weeks. In this article we discuss what Economic Sanctions are and how they exactly work.

While more resources and attention is spent combating money laundering and terrorist funding than ever before, the first and best line of defense often lies with financial institutions and concerned citizens who report suspicious activities to their local Financial Intelligence Unit. To encourage diligent reporting and monitoring, there are severe penalties for both individuals and institutions who fail to file a suspicious transaction report (STR) or suspicious activity report (SAR) despite having reasonable grounds to believe that a transaction is related to criminal activity.

In June 2022, the European Council adopted a sixth package of sanctions against Russia prohibiting the purchase, transfer or import of crude oil and other petroleum products to the EU, to be applied over the next six to eight months. These restrictions will cover nearly 90% of Russian oil imports to Europe by the end of 2022, reducing their trade profits significantly. While these unprecedented sanctions have not had their desired effect, businesses and citizens affected continue to hope that the conflict will be resolved and that business will resume as normal. Until then, however, it’s important for all businesses involved in international trade to keep abreast of current and potential sanctions that may still be implemented in the coming months.