The city state takes a firm stance against money laundering while remaining welcoming towards legitimate businesses and investments.

Singapore has published its 32-page national anti-money laundering (AML) strategy, as part of continuing efforts to maintain the effectiveness of anti money-laundering (ML) in the country.

The strategy, jointly-produced by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the Money Authority of Singapore (MAS), outlines the strategic approach to address ML risks, and guides risk-targeted actions amidst rapidly changing risks and criminal typologies.

It highlights three key pillars; the prevention of crime from entering and misusing Singapore’s system, the detecting and identifying of illicit flows and activities to ensure timely mitigation, and finally, the enforcing of firm and dissuasive actions against individuals who abuse Singapore’s system for ML.

The national AML strategy also takes into account Singapore’s updated money laundering national risk assessment (ML NRA), which was published on June 20. 

The ML NRA compiles money laundering risks observed by supervisory and law enforcement agencies, as well as, input from Singapore’s Financial Intelligence Unit, the Suspicious Transaction Reporting Office (STRO), and feedback from private sector entities and counterpart foreign authorities.