In response to last year’s shootings at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC) has released a set of guidelines to financial institutions intended to help monitor for possible signs of terrorist activity, reports
Reuters.
The list includes such suspicious endeavors as patrons who have suddenly paid off debt, transactions made to areas designated as “conflict zones” and clients who may be suddenly selling their property and belongings. It also advises practitioners to watch for names that have been associated with terrorist groups by law enforcement officials.
The suggestions were sent to financial institutions throughout the country, including banks, life insurance companies, real estate firms, accounting practices and casinos.
FINTRAC hopes that insurance and banking professionals will report any questionable transactions to the agency.
"FINTRAC is not issuing these indicators in order to ask reporting entities to do additional work, but to be more vigilant in the review of transactions involving their clients," spokesman Darren Gibb told
Reuters.
The agency has additionally warned institutions that extra scrutiny may be required since many terror-related transactions involve sums that are under $10,000.
The director of the agency Gerald Cossette told financial entities in an earlier email that their input was “extremely useful” for national security intelligence following the Parliament attacks in 2014.
"Indeed, your employees are often the first ones to have a suspicion regarding a transaction, which means that your efforts in submitting to us timely, relevant and high-quality suspicious transaction reports are fundamental to Canada's ability to combat money laundering and terrorism financing," he wrote.
The October shootings, which happened during the
IBAO conference, left many brokers and delegates frantically calling and texting loved ones to let them know they were safe and sound during the lockdown at the convention centre and adjacent Westin Ottawa Hotel.
One broker, Cory Young, the COO of Rhodes and Williams Insurance, told
Insurance Business at the time that “Things are still very unknown here in Ottawa... but it is a very bad situation All members of the convention at this point have been confirmed as safe.”
