Swiss Life fined in Singapore for violating guidelines Road workers die at highway construction site in Seewen SZ

Swiss Life must pay a fine of S$200,000 in Singapore for violating money laundering guidelines. That is the equivalent of about 134,000 francs. In addition to Swiss Life, the Singaporean units of Citibank, DBS Bank and Bank OCBC were also fined.

The financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) fined the four financial institutions a total of S$3.8 million on Wednesday, a statement said. The reason for this is violations of the anti-money laundering and terrorist financing guidelines.

Connection to Wirecard scandal

All institutions would have accepted the fines, the MAS continued. According to the authority, the violations are related to the Wirecard scandal. While investigating the irregularities surrounding Wirecard’s business dealings, the MAS also found involvement of people and companies based in Singapore. The German payment processor went bankrupt in 2020 after a billion dollar accounting fraud.

The authorities accuse the now-penalized institutions of insufficient control over Wirecard transactions. Although these are serious violations, there is no intentional misconduct by the employees of the institutions involved, the authority continues. Measures were also quickly taken to remedy the identified deficiencies.

According to the information, Swiss Life is concerned about violations that occurred in May 2017 in connection with the purchase of unit-linked life insurance. According to the MAS, the economic background and complex structure have not been sufficiently clarified.

As Swiss Life writes at the request of AWP, the Singapore branch contacted the responsible authorities about the said insurance contract in 2019 and the relevant customer relationship was terminated in 2020. Since then, the branch has taken additional measures in close cooperation with the authorities to better identify customer misconduct. (saw/sda/awp)