The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) has demanded financial institutions (FIs) providing financial services to real estate, precious metals, and stones businesses to specifically assess money laundering and financing of terrorism risks.
Thus, the CBUAE has issued a new Guidance on anti-money laundering and combatting the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) for its licensed financial institutions (LFIs) which provide services to real estate and precious metals and stones sectors.
LFIs are required to perform appropriate customer due diligence (CDD) and report any behaviour that they reasonably suspect may be linked to money laundering, financing of terrorism or a criminal offence by submitting suspicious activity reports directly to the UAE’s Financial Intelligence Unit using the ‘goAML’ portal.
The guidance came into effect on 20 June 2021 and aims to assist the understanding and mitigation of risks as well as the effective implementation by LFIs of their statutory AML/CFT obligations, as outlined in Federal Decree-Law No. (20) of 2018 on AML/CFT and the Cabinet Decision No. (10) of 2019.
The Guidance takes also into account the standards and guidance issued by Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now