In 2017 the National Bank of Ukraine continued to provide the law enforcement bodies with information that may be indicative of organized criminal activities and can be used to to detect, stop and prevent such activities, obtained during the compliance monitoring inspections and compliance with FX legislation inspections.
Thus, as of 1 January 2018, 33 letters were sent to law enforcement bodies with information on suspicious financial transactions of clients of 41 banks.
At the same time, in 2017, the NBU informed law enforcement bodies about large-scale financial transactions of clients of three banks for the total amount of more than UAH 200 million, USD 28 million and EUR 7 million in order to implement state policy in the field of combating organized crime.
In addition, during 2017 the NBU sent:
- two notifications on suspicious financial transactions to the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine;
- two notifications to the National Police of Ukraine on forgery of the NBU individual license to open an account outside Ukraine and forgery (documents, stamps) of the NBU individual license to export investment metals abroad.
- one message to the National Police of Ukraine regarding the execution of foreign exchange transactions with securities by two non-bank financial institutions without NBU general license.
It should be noted that a part of suspicious financial transactions, information about which was submitted to law enforcement bodies in 2017, was detected by employees of the National Bank of Ukraine during inspections conducted in 2016.
According to statistical reports on AML/CFT issues submitted by banks to the NBU, over 2017, banking institutions reported over 7.9 million financial transactions subject to AML/CFT monitoring to the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine. It is 25% more than in the same period of 2016 (over 6 million).
The major share of the reported transactions (over 90%) were financial transactions with cash and financial transactions by persons for whom banks defined a high exposure.
An introduction of risk-based approach in planning and supervision on AML/CFT issues and educational activities for banks on these issues benefited to higher efficiency of counteraction to “scheme” transactions.