Department of Internal Affairs Issues a Formal Warning
On 12 April 2023, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) issued a formal warning to real estate agent Arizto Limited (trading as Arizto). The formal warning was published on 2 June 2023. Arizto employs around 150 staff and sell residential properties throughout New Zealand.
The reasons for the formal warning are that Arizto failed to meet their obligations to establish, implement and maintain an antimony laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regime, and to conduct customer due diligence as required by the AML/CFT Act.
Arizto is not alleged to be involved in money laundering or financing of terrorism, but they are required to take immediate action to rectify the areas of non-compliance.
– Mike Stone, Director AML/CFT, DIA.
Arizto has demonstrated commitment towards improving its AML/CFT compliance regime following the issuance of the DIA’s inspection report.
You can read the full formal warning here.
Formal warnings are costly to reporting entities, because the AML/CFT Supervisors will set strict deadlines remediation. In addition, public formal warnings can have dire reputational consequences for reporting entities.
Internal detection
It is always better to detect any non-compliance issues internally, so that they can be addressed before a supervisory visit. Ways to detect potential aspects of internal AML/CFT non-compliance includes:
Internal assurance exercise, conducted by your AML/CFT compliance team; or
Assurance review conducted by an external provider, such as an AML/CFT specialist.
Get in touch if you have any questions on how we can help you to detect any potential non-compliance within your AML/CFT regime. We can guide you through an internal assurance exercise, or we can conduct the assurance review for you and issue you with a report.
