The Monetary Authority of Singapore is asking the government to amend the MAS Act and Trust Companies Act to give it more powers to hand over high-net-worth individuals' hitherto 'protected' financial information to whomever it sees fit, while still not allowing 'fishing expeditions'.

With the aim of strengthening its rules against money-laundering and terrorist finance, the Monetary Authority of Singapore intends to ask the government to amend the MAS Act and Trust Companies Act. One of the objects of the exercise is to to extend the anti-money-laundering and terrorist finance regime to financial holding companies. The consultative process ends on 7 July.

The Financial Holding Companies Act was enacted in April 2013 to extend the MAS’s powers to govern designated non-operating holding companies that hold banks or insurance companies in Singapore as subsidiaries but the regulator is claiming that it requires 'subsidiary legislation' (which it is developing) before that can come into force. This will, for the first time, describe holding companies as 'financial institutions' in the MAS Act.

Another amendment to that Act will, the MAS hopes, set out detailed obligations for firms to perform 'customer due diligence' (or 'know your customer') exercises and keep proper records in primary legislation for the first time. This is officially to "demonstrate Singapore’s commitment to adhere to international standards" as the United States, Australia and New Zealand have done, apparently without prompting from the Financial Action Task Force, the world's anti-money-laundering standard-setter. The MAS plans to consult interested parties about changes to its notices to incorporate the new CDD and record-keeping requirement.

The consultation paper makes mention of Singapore’s National Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment Report of 2013, which was full of nationalistic praise for the strength of the jurisdiction's licensing rules, anti-money-laundering and terrorist finance regulations and the MAS's supervision – the word 'strong' appears in it 57 times. It did, however, state that more could be done to help the cause of international co-operation and this is one of the central themes of the consultation paper.

The MAS already has 'powers' to obtain and exchange 'protected' supervisory information 'such as information obtained from the performance of CDD measures' about regulated financial institutions with foreign supervisors, which it is proposing to broaden in the hope of bettering international co-operation. These 'powers' to strip away 'protection' for various bits of information are to apply when the MAS wants to hand it over to various people for 'supervisory, investigation and law-enforcement purposes'. In a recent press release, the MAS betrayed a distinct interest in doing this with people's personal financial information. It is insisting, however, that 'fishing expeditions' by foreign authorities in the bank accounts of Singapore is still off the table, and refers to such exercises as 'abuse'. High-net-worth customers and their advisors may choose not to believe this.

The Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act is the primary legislation in Singapore that criminalises the laundering of the proceeds of crime and provides for the investigation and confiscation of such benefits. The penalty for the offence of money-laundering is imprisonment of up to 7 years and/or a fine of up to a maximum of S$500,000 for natural persons, with a maximum of S$1 million for financial institutions that commit such offences. In February 2010, the government amended the CDSA to address all the technical deficiencies that the FATF identified in a 'mutual evaluation' exercise. In July 2013, the crime of money-laundering was extended to cover more predicate offences such as serious tax offences. It is interesting that this law is not up for amendment according to the MAS's latest proposals, although another round of CDSA alterations is tentatively scheduled for this year, according to last year's risk-assessment report.