Singapore is considering tighter regulations at its casinos in an effort to prevent money laundering and financing for terrorism, the Singaporean Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA) said.
The regulator has already asked casino operators to lower the threshold for cash transactions that are subject to due diligence to S$5,000 (US$3,592), half the current legislated level, a spokesperson said in an e-mailed response to Bloomberg.
Singapore’s formal threshold is much higher than the global standard of US$3,000 set by the anti-money-laundering watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the CRA said.
“The [Singaporean] Ministry of Home Affairs and CRA are reviewing the legislative thresholds in the Casino Control Act with a view to lowering these thresholds further to fully comply with the FATF standards,” the CRA said.
Singapore’s casino industry is under the spotlight after Bloomberg reported last week that the US Department of Justice is investigating Marina Bay Sands Pte, the unit of billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp, over whether money laundering controls were breached in the way it handled the accounts of gamblers.
Marina Bay Sands also faces a probe in Singapore by the CRA into its money transfer policies.
Claims about these transfers surfaced in a lawsuit filed last year by Wang Xi, who sued Marina Bay Sands seeking to recover S$9.1 million, which he said was sent to other casino patrons in 2015 without his approval.
The Singapore Police Force is also investigating Wang’s complaint, Bloomberg News reported last month.
In an e-mailed response about the probes, the Singaporean casino said that it takes any such allegations seriously.
The regulator said that it is “committed to ensuring that the casinos in Singapore, including Marina Bay Sands, remain free from criminal influence or exploitation, and takes a serious view of any allegations of unauthorized money transfers.”
The CRA outlined the changes in due diligence thresholds in response to Bloomberg’s request for comment on the FATF report, which said last year that the city-state had inadequate customer due diligence requirements for entities such as casinos and real-estate agents.
It said that “moderate shortcomings are still affecting” the two sectors, without citing any companies.
The FATF report published in November last year is the third follow-up to the 2016 mutual evaluation report on Singapore.
Last year, the Singaporean government agreed to extend licenses to operate casinos held by Genting Singapore Ltd and Las Vegas Sands Corp to 2030, in exchange for pledges to invest a combined S$9 billion in tourism projects. The casinos remain closed amid the pandemic.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last