QCOSTARICA – The Superintendencia General de Entidades Financieras (Sugef) – General Superintendence of Financial Entities – considers that banks and other financial companies in Costa Rica have internalized the culture of risk prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing.
For this reason, in the last 10 years, they have reinforced controls to prevent them from being used for criminal purposes.
On Monday, February 19, the president if the Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) – Central Bank of Costa Rica – Roger Madrigal, said that if doubts persisted about the origin of the excess of dollars in the Costa Rican exchange market, Sugef and the Consejo Nacional de Supervisión del Sistema Financiero Nacional (Conassif) would have to intervene and determine if additional reviews should be made.
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However, the entity defends its surveillance work and also remembers the legal responsibilities of those supervised to prevent money laundering.
According to the Sugef, for the period 2022 – 2023, it carried out an average of 80 on-site or off-site supervision processes per year.
In each case, the respective reports are issued and the corresponding follow-ups are given, but due to legal prohibitions, Sugef cannot provide more details of these interventions.
In addition, Sugef says it supervises permanently through a risk-based model. The intensity of supervision is defined as taking into consideration the business lines and their inherent risks, as well as their management, residual risk, and direction.
“Simultaneously, transactions are monitored based on the information sent by those supervised (financial institutions) and based on its analysis, active contact is maintained with the entity,” said the Sugef.
Financial Entities must know the customer profile
The superintendency points out that the culture to prevent money laundering has been internalized, however, it considers that it is necessary and fundamental for financial entities to know their clients and economic activities.
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With this profile, they can be clear and documented whether it is reasonable or not for clients to have income in dollars and the corresponding amounts, and if any suspicious operation is identified, the corresponding report must be made to the ICD, the Instituto Costarricense sobre Drogas – the government agency heading the fight against drug trafficking.
Sale of goods in cash would be restricted
Since December 2021, a bill was submitted to the Legislative Assembly that seeks, among other things, to restrict the purchase of registered assets (movable and immovable) from being made with cash.
Amid the national discussion about the excess of dollars in the Costa Rican market and the effects that this generates in the Costa Rican productive sector, Sugef supports this bill as another control measure.
The bill would, that in any case, the money for these purchases must first go through the national financial system. In this way, the origin of the money would have to be made known.
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The Sugef explains that the bill seeks to reduce the use of cash in both national and foreign currency in activities that are recognized in the world as risky so that the practice of money laundering occurs, that is, entering it into the formal system after obtaining it from some source. illicit activity.
“This bill would contribute to national security issues, given that it would discourage the entry of illicit capital for purchases of this type of goods,” the Sugef indicated.
This article was published in Spanish in Observador.cr and translated by Q.
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