The Central Bank of Samoa has released a statement claiming that the overall risk of money laundering in Samoa through the local commercial banks is minimal.

The C.B.S. statement was issued on Friday with the banking industry regulator making reference to the work of its Financial Intelligence Unit (F.I.U.) doing onsite inspections of Samoa’s commercial banks.

The work that the unit has completed is called the Anti Money Laundering and Countering Terrorist Financing (A.M.L. and C.T.F.) onsite inspections of the commercial banks that began at the end of last month.

The four commercial banks are the ANZ Bank (Samoa) Limited and BSP Bank [Bank South Pacific] and the National Bank of Samoa and Samoa Commercial Bank.  

According to the C.B.S. statement, the F.I.U. is now better equipped with anti-money laundering certifications and certified fraud examinations to set out to fully implement the strategies and innovations gathered through these universal certifications.

“The Onsite inspections are part of the C.B.S. mandate under the Money Laundering Prevention Act 2007,” read the statement. 

“The onsite inspections included the F.I.U. team going into each Bank and examining methodically selected Bank Records and interviewing staff. 

“The F.I.U. examined the commercial banks entire systems and policies in relation to A.M.L. and C.T.F. matters and to assess whether all these policies are properly put into effect in order to effectively counter money laundering as well as their proper implementation.

“Upon completion of the onsite examinations of all four commercial banks, the final assessment for the overall risk of money laundering in the commercial banks of Samoa is very low. 

“Not only are the risks very low, their sophisticated money laundering alert systems are of a very high standard.”

In addition, domestically, Samoa’s commercial banks are thriving under the AML/CTF systems as the risk is very low.

“All four commercial banks fully cooperated with the F.I.U. as they carried out their onsite inspections. 

“The F.I.U. acknowledges that the commercial banks have made great efforts to improve their A.M.L./C.T.F. systems and standards since the last F.I.U. Onsite inspection in 2017.

“C.B.S. would also like to advise that contrary to misleading media reports, Samoa is not on any blacklist of any kind regarding its anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing systems.

“The ratings of Samoa are done through an international standard setter – FATF (Financial Action Task Force) which is headquartered in France.

“Apart from FATF, there is no other universally recognised standard-setter in terms of anti-money laundering.”