On 17 May 2016, Reanda EFA Secretarial Limited, the affiliated secretarial firm of Reanda Lau & Au Yeung (HK) CPA Limited, along with five other leading accredited corporate service providers (CSPs) in Hong Kong entered the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) Charter with the Hong Kong Institute of Chartered Secretaries (HKICS) during a signing ceremony and media conference hosted by the HKICS at the Hong Kong Club Building in Central, Hong Kong. Ms. Alberta Sie, Company Secretary and Director of Reanda EFA Secretarial Limited, signed the Charter on behalf of the company.
During the signing ceremony, the six CSPs including Reanda EFA Secretarial Limited, Ernst & Young Company Secretarial Services Limited, McCabe Secretarial Services Limited, SW Corporate Services Group Limited, Tricor Services Limited and Vistra Corporate Services (HK) Limited became the founding subscribers to the HKICS AML/CFT Charter after the demonstration of compliance with the guideline under HKICS’s accreditation programme.
The HKICS AML/CFT Charter was developed as part of HKICS’s broader remit to promote good governance and to assist Hong Kong in its compliance with its international obligations under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The guests of the event included Miss Salina Yan, JP, Deputy Secretary (Financial Services) of the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau of the HKSAR government, Ms. Rosalind Cheung, Principal Assistant Secretary of the Security Bureau Narcotics Division of the HKSAR Government, the representatives of the six leading CSPs as well as HKICS council members, and guests.
During this occasion, the HKICS also announced a new initiative about issuing a ‘Guideline’ to set standards converging to those for financial institutions which all CSPs may adopt in their AML/CFT fight and HKICS AML/CFT Charter welcome all CSPs to apply and subscribe under the programme involving an independent test of controls of their ML/FT risk, assessment procedures and Know Your Client obligations, hoping that it can close the loopholes of the possible money laundering, terrorist financing and illegal tax evasion.
In today’s ever-changing regulatory landscape, anti-money laundering has been catapulted onto the corporate governance agenda of many business and financial organizations. Reanda EFA Secretarial Limited has been committed to be a gatekeeper for Hong Kong in combating money laundering while assisting clients to navigate through the latest regulatory environment.
