Zia Ullah, a partner at Pannone in the UK, said that recent events should not prevent firms from continuing to screen bin Laden's name against EU and US sanctions lists. "People aren't going to stop screening the name because they won't want to have any link [in case] anything untoward happens," he told Thomson Reuters Accelus. Ullah said much would depend on whether bin Laden's name was taken off sanctions lists by the various government agencies, but he believed the name would remain intact.
"We have seen it with other entries, the identifier information changes to 'deceased' and that's it," he said.
Brian Dilley, head of KPMG's anti-money laundering practice, agreed and said that firms still needed to be extra-careful about the handling of suspect money. "In terms of his funds, they are likely to have been well-hidden already and not in any way associated with his name. His name is still on the official sanctions lists so firms will need to continue to search. I suspect the bin Laden name will remain on the list for some time to ensure that any movement of funds to his heirs from hidden sources are identified," he said.
Being Vigilant
Susannah Cogman, a partner at Herbert Smith, said firms needed to sit tight if they were in possession of frozen bin Laden money. "In the short term he remains on the sanctions lists, and if you have some of his assets frozen, keep them frozen. In the long term, something will clearly have to happen with his money - for example, if it falls to be inherited by someone who is not subject to sanctions. But I suspect in practice the political dimension will overtake this and hopefully any individual financial institution will not have too much head scratching to do about the disposal of his assets," she advised.
Duncan Aldred, a partner at CMS Cameron McKenna, said that firms needed to be looking more widely than bin Laden, particularly in light of the recent upheaval in the Middle East. He added that bin Laden's death had highlighted the wider importance of the PEPs regime.
"It highlights the fact that if you see the name [of Syrian president] Bashar al-Assad on something then you should be thinking 'What on earth is he doing moving those funds?'," he said.
The publicity surrounding the bin Laden situation had helped to illustrate exactly why the PEP regime had been put in place, he said. It had highlighted how successful people connected with such regimes could be in extracting funds the countries involved.
Lisa Osofsky, a regulatory adviser at risk consultancy Control Risks, pointed out that the terrorist leader had been caught through one of his accomplices and said that compliance staff and their colleagues should use this type of information to their advantage. She said that money laundering reporting officers had to be "quite broad" in terms of reading what was going on and should target some of those who were known to be bin Laden's confederates. She added that MLROs needed to cast their nets very widely in terms of who bin Laden had operated with, and should carry out the normal KYC checks while still treating him like a PEP with "extra, extra due diligence".
Osofsky, a former money laundering reporting officer at Goldman Sachs International in London, said it was well-known that bin Laden had come from a rich family and probably had some "amazing" fundraising capabilities. There might well, therefore, be a lot of money connected with the dead leader. Estimates have put bin Laden's fortune at up to 180 million pounds ($296 million), with much of the money likely to be hidden in secret bank accounts in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
"We know he has got lieutenants and that there are a lot of people out there doing his leg work. He managed to stay hidden because a lot of people were willing to help him over the years. These same people are willing to deal with the cash," Osofsky warned.
Ullah believed that there was unlikely to be an immediate influx of Al Qaeda money into the UK banking system following bin Laden's death; indeed, the opposite might be true.
"I don't think that any sensible or clever person involved in fundraising or funding would want to move money [now] as any significant money movement would alert the authorities and financial institutions. I think you are actually less likely to see movement in this period of time than normally. It would be highly suspicious and people's suspicions are more aroused at the moment than ordinarily," he explained.
Aldred agreed: "In a sense the silliest thing would be to move money that said bin Laden on it. The chances are that it won't say that so it therefore means that people have got to be extra-vigilant about stuff that doesn't have names on it because it is not just names that should make you suspicious; the general situation should as well."
Despite this both Aldred and Ullah agreed that firms needed to be especially watchful.
Aldred said that that bin Laden's death had "kicked up a hornet's nest", and that people needed to be aware of the consequences. Ullah said that banks needed to ensure that their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing systems were "up to scratch".
"This would be the worst time possible to get implicated in any sort of funding issue or issue connected with terrorism so it's actually a time when [banks] need to be on their guard more than ever," he said. He added that he did not think that recent events would lead the UK'sFinancial Services Authority to change its regulatory agenda.
Cogman also agreed that the current political climate meant that firms needed to be constantly alert to sanctions and terrorism issues but said she did not anticipate that bin Laden's death would cause too many problems for firms.
"Would I expect to see a significant upsurge of suspicious activity as a result of his death? It's difficult to rule out entirely but I struggle to see how that would materialise in practice," Cogman noted.
Osofsky added that banks faced a difficult task in trying to identify suspected terrorist financing as both the 9/11 and London bombings demonstrated that small amounts of money could lead to huge losses of life. "The problem with any terrorist-related activity is that the amounts involved are tiny. It's hard for the banks but his death doesn't change anything," she said.
The Al Qaeda leader was killed following a raid on his Pakistani hideaway by US special forces on Sunday night. The 54-year-old was allegedly responsible for the New York atrocities on September 11, 2001, when thousands of civilians were killed following a devastating attack on the World Trade Centre.
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