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The Danish Money Laundering Secretariat has published its 2021 annual report, revealing that there has been a dip in the number of suspicious transaction notifications.
Last year, Denmark’s financial intelligence unit received more than 70,000 notifications regarding potential financial crime.
Although this was four times as many notifications as the regulator received in 2016, it was a decrease in the number of notifications received in 2020, when the authority received more than 73,000 reports.
"In recent years, we have had a sharpened focus on the importance of the information that those required to provide to us pass on and what to look for if they have a suspicion,” said Jørgen Andersen, head of the Money Laundering Secretariat.
Andersen continued: “The notifications are absolutely essential for us to be able to curb money laundering and terrorist financing, and here the quality of the notifications is crucial and not the quantity itself.”
The report does, however, note that the department has not seen much attention given to its online notification system, GOAML.
“This may be because there are no signs of money laundering, or that there is a lack of attention to money laundering,” the report suggested, encouraging compliance staff to sign up.
The fall has been driven by a reduction in suspicious transaction and terrorist financing reports, according to the secretariat.
The decrease in the number of notifications from 2020 to 2021 is primarily due to a decrease in notifications from banks, currency exchange companies, auditors and savings companies.
In comparison, suspicious activity reports have increased.
In 2021, gaming providers and electronic money issuers, in particular, sent several notifications, with the majority having come from banking services and gaming providers.
In recent years, the Money Laundering Secretariat has worked on making it easier for those required to notify to plan their efforts against money laundering with the development of a new national risk assessment for money laundering, called the NRV.
The risk assessment was created in close collaboration with the industry organisations that are in scope, as well as other authorities.
