Manulife Financial Corporation announced yesterday that it has paid the penalty levied on its bank subsidiary for failing to disclose information on suspicious transactions.
It was the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) that imposed the penalty on Manulife Bank of Canada. FINTRAC alleged that the bank failed to file a suspicious transaction report, which was designed under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to detect criminal activity.
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In a statement released yesterday, the insurer insisted that the failure to file reports on the transactions was due to “administrative errors,” and not because it was facilitating money laundering. The insurer also claimed that it had fixed its errors back in 2014.
“The penalty essentially related to administrative lapses in reporting to FINTRAC,” the company said in a statement. “Although we operate at the highest ethical standard, we are capable of administrative errors. They were remedied in the first half of 2014. There is no evidence to suggest that the administrative reporting violations were connected to any financial misconduct.”
“Manulife did not enable or facilitate money laundering and media reports to the contrary are inaccurate,” the company maintained. “One violation involved a customer who had already been reported to law enforcement and FINTRAC by Manulife. Additional information released by FINTRAC in 2016 shows that Manulife proactively worked with law enforcement in both Canada and the United States in relation to the matter underlying the one suspicious transaction report (STR) violation, including advising law enforcement prior to the failure to file this one STR.”
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“I think what happened in this case is there’s two interpretations someone could take about the guidelines,” Manulife CEO Donald Guloien explained. “We took an interpretation that was clearly wrong, or certainly not the one that FINTRAC wanted us to hold, and it was repeated a number of times.”
Manulife stressed that because it has paid the penalty and remedied the administrative reporting lapses, it will put the matter in the past and will offer no further comments on it.
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