The investment management firm has been fined S$1.9 million for breaching anti-money laundering regulations

SINGAPORE: Fund manager Atrium Asia Investment Management has been fined S$1.9 million (US$1.4 million) for multiple violations of requirements protecting against money laundering and terrorist financing.

The company breached Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) requirements multiple times between June 2015 and October 2020, “leaving the company at risk of being misused for financial crimes”, the central bank said on Tuesday (Oct 29).

The company’s CEO, Mintarja Oei, has also been reprimanded for failing to ensure compliance. The company’s main breaches “are attributable to Mr Oei”, MAS said.

MAS said its inspection of Atrium Asia determined that its “internal policies and procedures at the time of the incident 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 alleged relationships between its customers and third parties.

The company also failed to properly assess the money laundering or terrorist 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 clients as politically exposed persons or their close associates and did not apply the enhanced due diligence measures required for such clients.

Atrium Asia also did not have internal procedures in place to maintain documents and information it needed to obtain from customers to meet MAS requirements. This resulted in the company not registering the identity of the beneficial owners of several customers and not keeping its documents verifying the identity of the beneficial owners up to date.

The company “has since taken corrective actions to address the identified deficiencies,” MAS said.