Switzerland Introduces New Anti-Money Laundering Measures

Switzerland is set to introduce new rules to tackle money laundering.

The regulations — set to be presented to the Swiss parliament next year — would make lawyers and consultants responsible for reporting risks and increase oversight of entities such as trusts, Reuters reported Wednesday (Aug. 30).

Switzerland, the largest manager of offshore bank accounts in the world, has tried to combat its image as a place for bad actors to keep illicit funds, according to the report.

The new rules would require lawyers, accountants and other company consultants to establish trusts or holding companies, or handle real estate deals, to comply with due diligence and reporting guidelines, the report said.

Banks and other financial institutions (FIs) will also have to pay closer attention to possible sanctions violations by their customers. And real estate deals and cash payments for gems and precious metals would be subject to money laundering checks above a certain value, per the report.

Switzerland’s efforts to combat money laundering come at the same time as similar measures around the world.

This year has seen the U.S. Department of Treasury call on decentralized finance (DeFi) companies and the U.S. government to do more to prevent criminals from transferring and laundering illicit proceeds.

The primary vulnerability exploited by these bad actors is the fact that many DeFi services have failed to establish anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) obligations, the treasury said in April.

Also in April, the British government introduced a new levy for regulated financial entities aimed at improving that country’s AML efforts.

Ted Datta, financial crime compliance expert at Moody’s Analytics, called the levy “an important step in unification of the entities involved in the fight against money laundering.”

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote in Mau that new applications of predictive artificial intelligence (AI) are helping companies boost their AML compliance programs.

Andrew Gleiser, chief revenue officer at payments provider Aeropay, told PYMNTS the same month that the use of AI has been “really big” for fraud prevention.

“The cutting-edge AI tech is able to better screen for patterns, connections and statistical anomalies in transactional activity that could have been missed by conventional, manual or human-led monitoring, as well as by enhancing AML processes with hyper-targeted customer risk priority categorization during onboarding,” PYMNTS wrote at the time.