Investment management firm handed S$1.9 million penalty for breaches of anti-money laundering requirements

SINGAPORE: Fund manager Atrium Asia Investment Management has been handed a S$1.9 million (US$1.4 million) penalty over multiple breaches of requirements that safeguard against money laundering and terrorism financing.
The firm breached the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) requirements multiple times between June 2015 and October 2020, “putting the firm at risk of being misused for financial crime”, the central bank said on Tuesday (Oct 29).
A reprimand has also been issued to the company’s CEO Mintarja Oei for failing to ensure its compliance with the requirements. The firm’s key breaches “are attributable to Mr Oei”, MAS said.
MAS said that its inspection of Atrium Asia found that its “internal policy and procedures at the material time were inadequate”.
Atrium Asia did not implement adequate processes to detect and report suspicious and unusually large customer transactions with third parties, and as a result, processed several such transactions without verifying the purported relationships between its customers and third parties.
The firm also did not properly assess the money laundering or terrorism financing risks posed by its customers, nor did it implement appropriate risk mitigation measures to address tax-related money laundering risks, MAS said.
Due to a lack of internal risk management systems and procedures, Atrium Asia failed to identify several customers as politically exposed persons or their close associates and did not apply the enhanced due diligence measures required for such customers.
Atrium Asia also did not have internal procedures to keep records of documents and information that it was required to obtain from customers to meet MAS’ requirements. This resulted in the firm not recording the identities of several customers’ beneficial owners and failing to keep its documents verifying beneficial owners’ identities up to date.
The company “has since taken remedial actions to address the deficiencies that have been identified”, MAS said.