The Central Bank of UAE (CBUAE) has allotted new-fangled guidelines on anti-money laundering and battling the funding of terrorism for its licensed financial institutions (LFIs) which deliver services to cash-intensive businesses (CIBs).
The Central Bank of UAE’s guidelines
The guideline saw validity on 28th September 2021. The guidelines demand LFIs to resonate with its requirements within 1 month and will aid the LFIs in implementation and understanding of their legal Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) compulsions.
Khaled Mohamed Balama, Governor of the Central Bank of UAE, stated that the new-fangled anti-money laundering guidelines sustain the Central Bank of UAE’s pledge to device high regulatory control over LFIs and their transactions CIB activities. The guidelines will also counterpart UAE’s intention to actively participate in international efforts in anti-money laundering and to combat the financing of terrorism, the Governor of the Central Bank of UAE said.
Cash-intensive businesses (CIBs) are enterprises that witness a large volume of cash flow, spreading through several industry sectors such as trading, wholesale, travel, retail, and transport.
Some features of these enterprises, like cash deposits, involvement of cash couriers, cross-border movement of cash, and currency exchanges tend to be susceptible to money laundering or the financing of terrorism from illegal businesses.
As postulated in the Central Bank of UAE’s guidelines, licensed financial institutions that deliver services to cash-intensive businesses must make risk-centric approaches in their anti-money laundering programs by evaluating all CIB consumers to elaborate their degree of risk. LFIs must execute suitable customer due diligence that encompasses the identification of owners and customers, the prevalent monitoring of the business relationship, and the understanding of the customer business.
LFIs must also procure suitable information relating to the source of the cash deposited in the customer’s bank account and order the utilization of the Emirates Identity (Emirates ID) for cash deposits through ATMs.
Additionally, LFIs must identify unusual patterns of activity to report suspicious behavior via transaction monitoring systems. The LFIs must report behaviors and activities that might be associated with criminal activities, like money laundering or financing of terrorism, to the UAE’s Financial Intelligence Unit through the goAML portal.