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By Huw Jones
LONDON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Not all of Britain's financial
firms are convinced of the need to invest large sums to crack
down on dirty money, leaving the quality of anti-money
laundering controls falling short, the Financial Conduct
Authority's chief enforcer said on Thursday.
Global banks, including UK-based HSBC, Barclays and Standard
Chartered, face fresh scrutiny on their efforts to curb money
laundering after a cache of leaked documents showed they
transferred more than $2 trillion in suspect funds over nearly
two decades.
"What surprises me still is there is a view in some quarters
that anti-money laundering systems and controls is a lot of
money for nothing in return, and it's a huge bureaucratic
exercise in red tape rather than something that's really
important," the FCA's head of enforcement Mark Steward told
reporters.
"What that tells me is that the point of AML controls has
somehow got lost and gone missing from the challenge, and
understanding that this is all about reducing crime of a very
serious nature."
Steward said banks are spending a lot of money on systems
and controls that in many cases, are still not yet good enough
to do the job and "something really needs to happen".
"I am not yet sure that there is a strong enough, unanimous
view that this is really serious," Steward said.
There is no major bank in Britain that hasn't been or isn't
currently the subject of an ongoing probe related to the
adequacy of their dirty money safeguards, he said.
"We have a number of cases in the pipeline," he said.
(Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Kirstin Ridley, Kirsten
Donovan)
