The Swiss Money Laundering Reporting Office (MROS) has announced that, after
a three-year slump, the volume of suspicious activity reports (SARs) has regained
momentum, with SARs from the banking sector having reached a record high in
2007.
In 2007, MROS received a total of 795 SARs (up from 619 in 2006), which amounted to
a 28.4% increase over last year's figure. It is also the third highest reporting
volume observed since 1998, the year when MROS began gathering statistics on
incoming SARs.
The rise in reporting volume is mainly attributed to the increase in the number
of SARs received from the banking sector (up 37%), particularly those relating
to investment fraud.
According to MROS, with 2007 a good year for financial
activities and the stock market, scam artists were given more opportunities
to dupe trusting investors with unrealistic offers of quick and easy gains.
These activities triggered SARs from banks, which suspected money laundering.
In 2007, the total asset value of incoming SARs also increased by nearly 13%
to around CHF921mn (USD902mn) from around CHF816mn in 2006.
This increase was again mainly due to the greater influx of SARs from the banking
sector, made possible by the fact that the bank's professional money laundering
specialists now have efficient monitoring systems at their disposal.
There was also a surge in the number of voluntary SARs submitted, the level of which
rose 110% in 2007, compared with 2006. This has been put down to the fact that
more voluntary SARs are being sent to MROS rather than to law enforcement agencies
directly, which has boosted the voluntary SAR figure in the MROS statistics.
At present, the Swiss Criminal Code still gives financial
intermediaries the choice between submitting voluntary SARs to MROS or to law
enforcement agencies. Mandatory SARs submitted by virtue of Art. 9 of the Anti-Money
Laundering Act, however, must always be sent to MROS.
Here again there was a
noticeable increase in the number of mandatory SARs: up 11% from the banking
sector and up 5.8% from all other financial intermediary categories combined.
Once again, the payment services sector was the second largest contributor
of SARs (29% of all incoming SARs came from this category), which influenced the reporting volume in the MROS statistics.
As in the previous reporting
year, most of the SARs from the payment services sector came from the so-called
"money transmitters" (68% of all SARs received from the payment services
sector).
As in the previous reporting year, MROS received fewer SARs relating to suspected
terrorist financing. A total of six SARs were submitted, amounting to 0.03%
(around CHF233,000) of the total asset value of all incoming SARs.
The quality of SARs submitted in 2007 was high, enabling MROS to forward a
large proportion (around 79%) of incoming SARs to law enforcement agencies.
However, the quality varied greatly among the various financial intermediary
categories: while nearly 91% of SARs from the banking sector could be forwarded,
the same was true for only about 52% of SARs from the payment services sector.
The smaller percentage of forwarded SARs was mainly due to the large proportion
of SARs from the so-called "money transmitters", a subgroup of the
payment services sector that gathers very little information about its customers,
and therefore tends to generate lower quality SARs.
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