Six banks share customer info to help Singapore fight money laundering

Singapore's Monetary Authority on Monday launched an application, intuitively named "COllaborative Sharing of Money Laundering/TF Information & Cases" (COSMIC for short, obviously) to target money laundering and terrorism financing. COSMIC was co-developed by MAS and six major commercial banks in Singapore: DBS, OCBC, UOB, …

[Anonymous Coward]

"only if the customer's profile or behavior displays certain objectively defined characteristics"

Pah, like most anti money laundering (ALM) it will just inconvenience genuine customers whilst the crimminals will already be two steps ahead of the authorities.

[veti]

You're very quick to dismiss the effort. Do you have any actual knowledge about it, or are you just going by the form book?

[Yorick Hunt]

Consult "The Panama Papers" (among others) to see where the real criminals are doing their laundering. Hint: it's not Singapore.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You're very quick to dismiss the effort. Do you have any actual knowledge about it, or are you just going by the form book?"

Well, in this case the form book is very clear - by total money laundering value, those countries with the most strident voices against money laundering (and the most stringent regulations) actually see the highest money laundering volumes - so the global top 5 (of OECD nations) are US, UK, France, Germany, Canada. Singapore's money laundering estimates are in the 2-5% range like other large trading economies.

The war on money laundering is as successful as the war on drugs, which is to say that it is largely ineffective. The only question is whether that ineffectuality is through incompetence or intent.