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Reporting Obligations in the Particular Context of Mobile Money
reports or to ensure that a comprehensive report is filed. The lead party and the other parties may need effective information-sharing mechanisms that meet legal requirements, including privacy protections.
Related Rights, Obligations, and Processes The allocation of reporting duties suggested above will be effective only if the parties also assume the related obligations. For example, the AP must ensure that its employees and retail outlets receive proper training to enable them to identify and report suspicious transactions. Reporting processes (especially reporting lines) and internal responsibilities (such as those of the money-laundering reporting officer) must be clear. Appropriate records should be kept, and all parties should be aware of the need to keep information confidential and should not inappropriately disclose information regarding potential or actual STRs. The reporting obligation must be linked to the duty to monitor transactions, customers, and retail outlets; and should be supported by sufficient capacity to investigate potential suspicious behavior, including identity fraud. M-money providers must be able to ensure effective and ongoing monitoring of accounts and customers. Accounts and customers that were subjects of an STR must be monitored closely for a reasonable period, and an STR should be filed for each additional suspicious transaction that may be concluded. The AP also requires processes and capacity that enable it (1) to monitor retail outlets’ compliance with their obligations (including the obligation to inform the AP of any suspicious operations) and (2) to take corrective action when required (including terminating an agency agreement, when necessary). When an international company is one of the service providers—especially when it is the AP—general STR filing duties may be split among group, regional, and local officers. In practice, banks and other financial institutions entrust their designated compliance officers with the task of completing and submitting STRs to the relevant authority prescribed by the national AML law. In the case of financial groups, STR obligations are determined on the basis of internal arrangements and geographic locations. For example, AML tasks can be split among the group AML officer, the regional AML officer, and the country AML officer. The last of those parties actually develops and maintains procedures and systems to ensure that STRs are reported to local authorities in accordance with local law and to the group AML officer (if not explicitly forbidden by local law).