29 June 2022  

Payable Through Account – by Marijo Samneh

Payable Through Account (PTA) – In a Nutshell

In some correspondent relationships, the respondent bank’s customers are permitted to conduct their own transactions, directly with the correspondent bank, without clearing these transactions through the respondent bank. These arrangements are called Payable Through Accounts (PTA)

PTA activities are very High Risk Correspondent Services that requires strengthened Due Diligence and Compliance monitoring. Banks that have an AML program will not permit these types of practices.

However, banks still want to make sure that other banks they deal with do not offer it. They can get confirmation of this via a yes/no question on their AML questionnaire.

#bankingindustry #aml #compliance #inanutshellbymj #marijosamneh
24 June 2022  

Nostro v/S Vostro Accounts

Nostro v/s Vostro accounts – In a Nutshell

In the correspondent banking relationships, banks can have “Nostro” or “Vostro” Accounts.
Let’s say Bank A and Bank B want to establish a correspondent banking relationship together.
In this example I work at Bank A and you work at Bank B.
Vostro Account: Vostro refers to your money (Bank B) deposited at my bank (Bank A). If you get lost replace the word “Vostro” by “Votre” in French which means “Yours”.
Nostro Account: Nostro refers to our money (Bank A) deposited at your Bank (Bank B). If you get lost replace the word “Nostro” by “Notre” in French which means “Ours”.

#bankingindustry #aml #compliance #marijosamneh #inanutshellbymj
09 June 2022  

Environmental Crimes

The major difference between Environmental Crimes and other crimes concealed by Money Laundering is that for an act negatively affecting the environment to be considered a crime, it must have borne a damage to the environment without obtaining proper licensing and authorization.

For instance the activity of selling timber is not necessarily a criminal offense whereas drug trafficking or arms trafficking are and therefore systematically labeled as crimes.

In other words, the act must be done illegally to qualify as Environmental Crime, while the mere fact of being caught selling drugs or arms qualifies as a crime.

It is for this reason that criminals prefer ti take the Environmental Crime route since it is harder for authorities to control and provide law enforcement.

Criminals also generate huge amounts of money from such activities. Therefore they were named by the FATF the “low risk and high reward” crimes.

#environmentalcrimes #moneylaundering #aml #compliance #inanutshellbymj