Tiger Brokers fined $900k over breaches of money-laundering, terrorism financing laws

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The New Zealand branch of a Singapore-based online share broker has been penalised $900,000 for breaching anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism laws.

Tiger Brokers admitted to failing to conduct customer due diligence, failing to report suspicious activities, and failing to keep records.

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) brought the case after an investigation showed close to $60.8 million of transactions were done without the proper checks and controls involving nearly 3768 customers between April 2019 and January 2020.

It said Tiger’s record-keeping breaches showed its weak compliance approach across its business which, in the 2019-2020 reporting year, involved between 69,705 and 126,230 customers and transactions to a gross total value of between $3.6b and $35.2b.

The FMA issued the firm a formal warning in 2020 because of the severity of the breaches, but went to the High Court to set the penalty.

Head of enforcement Margot Gatland said it was not alleging money laundering or terrorism financing had taken place, but Tiger failed to comply with core responsibilities.

“The judgment reinforces the importance of these laws in maintaining the integrity of New Zealand’s financial markets; non-compliance is a serious matter.”

New Zealand operations of foreign companies could not rely on a third party or parent companies to fulfil their compliance obligations, she said.