FINTRAC - Suspicious Transaction Reporting
Suspicious Transaction Reporting is particularly critical to FINTRAC's ability to generate actionable financial intelligence for Canada's Law Enforcement and National Security Agencies.
Reporting to FINTRAC helps them to disclose information to Law Enforcement and National Security Agencies in order to assist with money laundering investigations, terrorist activity, financing investigations, sanctions, evasions, or a threat to security.
Do you know WHEN to report? WHO to report to? WHAT is required to report? and HOW to report?
Take this quick five-question quiz to find out!
Who is responsible for reporting Suspicious Transaction Activity to FINTRAC?
If you are a person who is an employee of a reporting entity and your employer is actively reporting suspicious transactions, FINTRAC does not require duplicate reporting. An employee is only expected to report suspicious transactions to FINTRAC in the rare instances where they believe that their employer has not submitted a Suspicious Transaction Report as required by the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (the Act) and associated Regulations.
To submit a Suspicious Transaction Report in this scenario, the employee may use the paper report form as explained in section 4.
What is the responsibility of Brokerages and their members when it comes to reporting Suspicious Transaction Activity?
All Brokerages are required to have and maintain a Compliance Regime including an up-to-date manual of FINTRAC policies, and a Compliance Officer that keeps members of a Brokerage trained and up-to-date with FINTRAC policies and procedures.
What are some red flags of Suspicious Transaction Activity?
Red flags typically stem from one or more factual characteristics, behaviours, patterns or other contextual factors that identify irregularities related to financial transactions or attempted transactions. These often present inconsistencies with what is expected of your client based on what you know about them.
A suspicious transaction report is a type of report that you must submit to FINTRAC when a financial transaction occurs, or is attempted, in the course of your activities and there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the transaction is related to the commission or the attempted commission of a money laundering or terrorist activity financing offence.
Note: You are not allowed to inform anyone, including the client, of the contents of a Suspicious Transaction Report, or that you have made or will make such a report, if the intent is to prejudice a criminal investigation. This applies whether such an investigation has begun or not. It is important to not tip off your client about the fact that you are filing a Suspicious Transaction Report—therefore, you should not be requesting information that you would not normally request during a transaction if you believe this would tip off the client.
When do you need to report any suspected Suspicious Transaction Activity?
You must submit the Suspicious Transaction Report to FINTRAC as soon as practicable after you have completed measures that enable you to establish that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the transaction or attempted transaction is related to the commission of a money laundering or terrorist activity financing offence.
Note: There is no monetary threshold associated with the reporting of a suspicious transaction.
How do you report any suspected Suspicious Transaction Activity to FINTRAC? (Select all that apply)
You must submit a suspicious transaction report to FINTRAC using the following options:
1. FINTRAC Web Reporting system https://fintrac-canafe.canada.ca/reporting-declaration/info/f2r-eng
2. FINTRAC API Report Submission https://fintrac-canafe.canada.ca/reporting-declaration/info/api/api-eng
3. Paper reporting: If you do not have the technical capability to submit reports electronically, you must submit reports in paper form to FINTRAC. You can access and print the Suspicious Transaction Report in paper form on the Paper reporting forms web page, or request to have one faxed or mailed to you by calling 1-866-346-8722.
You can submit a Suspicious Transaction Report in paper form to FINTRAC either by:
Fax: 1-866-226-2346
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Mail:
Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada,
Section A 234 Laurier Avenue West, 24th floor, Ottawa, ON K1P 1H7 Canada
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