The International Chamber of Commerce Qatar (ICC Qatar) in collaboration with Refinitiv Protiviti and FinScan, held a webinar on ‘Spotlight on the latest risk and financial crime trends’ Tuesday.
The webinar comprised keynote presentations from Nipun Srivastava, managing director and Middle East leader of Financial Crime and Regulatory Advisory Practice, Protiviti; Marina Agathangelou, customer success manager-EMNAQ, Customer & Third-Party Risk Solutions, Refinitiv, and Ibrahim Doubli, regional director, Middle East & Africa, FinScan Compliance & Data Quality Solutions.
The webinar highlighted the recent Financial Action Task Force (FATF) mutual evaluations assessments of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC); the sanctions and the latest financial crime trends following the recent events in Eastern Europe, and how data quality issues with advanced matching technology can make your risk and compliance initiatives more robust and effective.
The virtual event was attended by participants from several law firms, auditing firms, banks, and insurance companies.
Addressing the participants, Srivastava stated, “Qatar has implemented several actions to strengthen its AML/CFT and Sanctions Compliance framework across financial and non-financial sectors.
“However, as the experience from other GCC countries such as Saudi Arabia and UAE shows, the mutual evaluation is only the beginning of next phase of work required to prepare the country to fight current and emerging financial crime risks.
“With the availability of multiple public and private sources of data and automation/machine learning-based platforms to help process and make sense of information, Qatar organisations are expected to spend their resources efficiently in preventing or investigating financial crime.
“Further, the National Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Committee (NAMLC), Qatar Central Bank (QCB), Financial Information Unit (FIU) and other bodies may consider implementing Public Private Partnerships to bring the best industry tools to support the government bodies in their national agenda.”
Agathangelou said, “In response to the ongoing developments in Eastern Europe, a number of countries have implemented new sanctions. This serves as a reminder that institutions need to have a strong and effective sanctions screening programme in order to remain vigilant of the ongoing changes and remain compliant.
“Sanctions and geopolitics paired with Covid-19 and its variants, have increased the level of financial crime across the globe, with many areas vulnerable to criminals looking to exploit the disruption for their personal gain. Supply chain disruptions, fraud, cybercrime as well as the use of offshore corporate structures are some of the financial crime trends that organisations need to take into account when designing and reviewing their name screening and transaction monitoring programmes.”
Doubli stated “It was a great pleasure joining ICC Qatar, Refinitiv and Protiviti to share knowledge about the latest trends in AML/CTF, and especially regarding the important role data quality plays in achieving effective compliance, which is a critical topic with regulators and throughout our industry nowadays. I look forward to continuing working with the institutions in Qatar in their efforts to comply with fast changing local and global regulations.”
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