It has been reported today that ABN Amro, the Dutch bank that is half-owned by the Dutch Government, is being investigated by the country’s public prosecutor. Though it has not revealed what that investigation entails, it has warned that ‘ it could face fine for lapses in its client due diligence that may have allowed breaches of money laundering and terrorism financing laws ’. In today’s post, we will look at the potential for this investigation, and assess this against the backdrop of what seems to be an increased commitment to compliance on behalf of ABN Amro, paradoxically. In light of a recent article I developed looking at Sigma Ratings , it is worthwhile considering their mission again in light of yet another massive breach of AML regulations, potentially. Though the bank has been unable to declare what the investigation concerns, its suggestion that it may be regarding breaches in AML compliance have resulted in a 9.3% drop in the shares already. The article in the FT di...

In today’s post we will preview an article by this author that is due to be published soon in the Journal of Money Laundering Control . The article is available in its pre-published format here . In this post we will review the underlying premise of the article, and present the target of the article which is a new venture in the anti-money laundering arena – Sigma Ratings . The article aims to introduce the new venture to the literature and examine its potential against the backdrop of the anti-money laundering (AML) arena, and also against the experiences of its model-sharing cousins, the credit rating agencies. For clarity, Sigma Ratings is essentially a mixture of the two worlds and seeks to bring the credit rating model into the AML arena, with the hope being that the agency will enable the world to ‘ transact with confidence ’. To achieve this aim, the article presents a number of different contexts. The first context presented is that of the AML world and some of the compe...