Zamani Abdul Ghani: Strengthening governance to derive value Keynote address by Dato’ Zamani Abdul Ghani, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the International Financial Crime and Terrorism Financing Conference 2010, Kuala Lumpur, 19 July 2010. *  *  *  It is my great pleasure to welcome all of you to this Second Annual International Conference on Financial Crime and Terrorism Financing. There has been an overwhelming response this year where participation, including international participation, has significantly increased from last year. I believe that this stems from the success of the first conference. There is also no doubt of increasing interest of the financial industry in preserving the integrity of the financial system, particularly from the threats of financial crime and terrorism financing. Let me begin by congratulating Malaysia’s Compliance Officers Networking Group (or the CONG Group) for successfully organising this conference. The CONG Group has worked tirelessly in collaboration with the Institute of Bankers Malaysia, the Securities Industry Development Corporation, the Malaysian Insurance Institute and the Asian Institute of Finance. In the preparatory discussions with members of the CONG Group, I personally witnessed the dedication, hard work and commitment shown by the Group in bringing out the best of the industry through this Conference. Needless to say, we in Bank Negara Malaysia or the Central Bank of Malaysia, has given our specific support to this Conference.
Such reports do not in any way implicate the customers of any unlawful activity or that investigation will commence as soon as the STRs or CTRs are lodged. Let me reiterate that the submission of these reports is to facilitate the gathering of financial intelligence for analysis purposes. Then, it is equally important to establish a range of red flags to enable detection of suspicious transactions. One important area is to be alert on high risk jurisdictions. Bank Negara Malaysia has, from time to time, provided information on this area such as circulars on countries that are deficient in their AML/CFT regime as identified by the FATF. In addition, please do keep yourself updated on sanctions from the United Nations as well as reports from multilateral organisations, such as the UNODC, which report on AML/CFT matters for a number of countries. Information from various sources would support the STRs and CTRs mechanism. The effective implementation of internal AML/CFT programme relies strongly on the capacity and capability of the resources supporting the programme. This is translated into the third  4  BIS Review 99/2010  key aspect of the AML/CFT programme, that is the provision of adequate and applicable resources to the compliance section of your institution. It is the responsibility of your Board and management to ensure that the compliance section is given due consideration and importance in terms of resources. It is within this context that I see the financial institutions corporate social responsibility (CSR) should be undertaken.