Thursday, June 6, 2019

WHEN USING FOREIGN NEWS ARTICLES FOR ENHANCED DUE DILIGENCE, USE PRESS FREEDOM CHART TO ASCERTAIN RELIABILITY OF INFORMATION

If you are a compliance officer conducting an enhanced due diligence inquiry on a new prospective foreign bank client, and you are accessing media from his or her country, one of the ways you can judge whether the material you find is reliable (or truthful) is the degree of pres freedom in that nation.

Here is the latest Press Freedom Chart; with it, you may ascertain the extent of press freedom that exists in the client's country. Given that many non-democratic nations either censor news about corruption among government officials, or PEPs, or self-censorship is practiced by press in other with similar totalitarian governments, you may use the chart to validate the level of accuracy of negative  information you obtain from that country.



Alternatively, where there is absolutely nothing available about your client, from a non-democratic jurisdiction, you may not draw the conclusion he or she is clean. You then must seek out information from other sources, in countries known for press freedom, and lack of government interference in media coverage.

Sometimes, even this chart and your other public sources are not helpful; in that case, you must entertain whether non-public sources must be enlisted to get to the truth about your new, affluent and promising, client.

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