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MEDIA STATEMENT

19/12/2018

Taking into account the allegations made by certain media, referring to the competences of the Central Bank of Montenegro (CBCG), in the sense that the CBCG acted inadequately to prevent the commission of the offense, i.e. money laundering, we consider it necessary to inform the public of the following: 


Pursuant to the Law on Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (OGM 33/14, 44/18), the CBCG monitors the implementation of the Law and regulations enacted on the basis of the Law, with regard to banks and other financial institutions. In accordance with the Law, the CBCG shall, before conducting inspection, inform the Administration for Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Administration) about the monitoring activities it plans to undertake. 


Supervision of business compliance of Atlas banka AD Podgorica (Bank) with the regulations regarding money laundering and terrorist financing was conducted in 2018. 


Prior to carrying out of this supervision, the CBCG notified the Administration and requested to be provided information and data that it had obtained in the process of conducting the legally prescribed obligations, which would be further checked by the CBCG supervisors during their on-site supervision in the Bank. 


During the aforementioned inspection, the authorized supervisors, among other, performed supervision of the Bank's operations with customers who were using the e-Commerce service. For more detailed information, a representative sample of supervision was taken, consisting of 32 legal entities out of 108 entities who deal or have dealt with e-Commerce service, which represents 29.63% of total customers who opened an account with the Bank with the intent of engaging in e-Commerce services. Of these, 24 customers have a status of active of the total 47, which represents a share of 51.06%. The Bank presented 61 customers who have the inactive status on the day of supervision. Out of that number, the Supervision selected 8 customers (13.11%). 


Therefore, during the supervision of the Bank, pursuant to the Law on Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, the CBCG checked whether the Bank performed measures and actions in accordance with the Law, i.e. whether it:


  1. Identified risks, conducted risk assessments and established policies, supervisions, procedures and whether it undertook actions to reduce the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing;
  2. Identified and verified customers based on credible, independent and objective sources and monitored customer`s business operations;
  3. Possessed the appropriate information system, therefore providing automated support for customer risk assessment, continuous monitoring of customers' business relations and supervision of transactions, as well as timely delivery of information, data and documentation to the Administration;
  4. Appointed an authorized person for the implementation of measures to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing and its deputy and whether it had provided conditions for their work;
  5. Organized regular professional training and further education of employees; 
  6. Created and regularly updated the list of indicators for identifying suspicious customers and transactions;
  7. Kept records and provided protection and storage of data and documentation obtained in accordance with the Law on Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing;
  8. Established and monitored a system that enables it to respond in full and in a timely manner to the requests of the Administration and the competent state authorities in accordance with the Law. 

Pursuant to the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, if the CBCG, during the supervision, estimates there is a suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing related to transaction or entity or determine facts that may be related to these, it shall immediately inform the Administration without delay. 


Also, pursuant to the Law on Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, all banks shall submit to the Administration the reports on cash transactions for the amounts of at least 15,000 euros, as well as the reports on customers and transactions suspected to be engaged in money laundering or terrorist financing.


In accordance with the above, the Report of the Bank Onsite Examination was submitted to the Administration, according to the procedure and after the expiration of the legal deadline for submitting remarks on the report by the Bank.