Canada introduced a new Cannabis law, Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, expected to come into force in July 2018. Skip to Part 2, below, if you just want to review the new law. Part 1 – Background on Current Law, Illegal Dispensing; Denial of Bank Accounts Illegality of Cannabis Sales Except for Medical Purposes Until [...]
Blacklist in place Last week, the FATF voted to keep Iran on a blacklist, which means that banks are being advised that they may want to treat financial transactions from Iran with heightened scrutiny. It’s an interesting decision because Iran is, in many ways, more transparent that many other countries that appear to have no FATF [...]
Financial inclusion continues to be an important part of the dialogue on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing law, because the latter results in a greater number of people being de-risked out of financial services or denied banking services altogether. In this piece in American Banker, we explore the issues that arise with the way in [...]
Terrorist risks for refugees There appears to be a debate that has the potential to escalate in this country in respect of whether there are risks for Canada in taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees. No decision is ever risk-free. The decision to accept Syrian refugee is no different – it is not risk free. But [...]
Re-Writing Financial Regulation Risk and innovation don’t always go well together. If banks, regulators, lawyers and companies involved in emerging FinTech could re-write financial regulation, including anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulation globally, what would it look like? What should stay, if anything and what’s missing? Should we give a pass [...]
Consensus on Supranational Risk Assessment As part of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive approval process in the European Union (the “4th AMLD“), the Council of the European Union’s President yesterday issued declarations and proposals for the regulation of anonymous financial transactions that are transacted on new fintech products. The communication from the President included Declarations [...]
Fourth banks closes remittances businesses Another bank in Australia, the Westpac Bank, has announced it will close its remittance business division next week over the difficulty of complying with counter-terrorism laws. By de-risking and closing its remittance division, the Bank is terminating the bank accounts of all of its business customers who operate money services [...]