The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced enforcement outcomes from supervisory examinations of financial institutions with a nexus to persons of interest in the August 2023 money laundering case, imposing composition penalties totalling SGD 27.45 million on nine financial institutions and taking regulatory actions against individuals. MAS framed the measures as concluding its enforcement actions against financial institutions with a material nexus to the case. Penalties were imposed on six banks, two capital markets services licence holders and one licensed trust company, led by Credit Suisse Singapore Branch at SGD 5.8 million and United Overseas Bank Limited at SGD 5.6 million, followed by UBS AG, Singapore Branch at SGD 3 million, Citibank N.A. Singapore and Citibank Singapore Limited collectively at SGD 2.6 million, Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd., Singapore Branch at SGD 2.4 million, LGT Bank (Singapore) Ltd. at SGD 1 million, UOB Kay Hian Private Limited at SGD 2.85 million, Blue Ocean Invest Pte. Ltd. at SGD 2.4 million, and Trident Trust Company (Singapore) Pte. Limited at SGD 1.8 million. MAS attributed the breaches largely to poor or inconsistent implementation of existing AML/CFT controls, highlighting shortcomings in customer risk assessment, corroboration of higher-risk customers’ source of wealth, review of suspicious transactions flagged by monitoring systems, and post-suspicious transaction report follow-up. The Credit Suisse penalty also reflected separate AML/CFT breaches from November 2017 to October 2023 relating to certain US customer accounts, including failures around aliases, source of wealth corroboration and beneficial ownership. MAS issued prohibition orders of three to six years to four Blue Ocean Invest executives and relationship managers, with two three-year orders effective from 30 June 2025 and the five- and six-year orders effective from 1 August 2025, and reprimanded senior managers at Trident Trust Company (Singapore) and two former United Overseas Bank team heads, while privately reprimanding nine other relationship managers and supervisors. The financial institutions have started remediation and MAS will monitor progress, it may take action against a few remaining individuals after ongoing court proceedings or investigations conclude, and it also published supervisory expectations on controls to address the supervisory findings alongside industry best practice papers, particularly on source of wealth corroboration.

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