How I Cracked the FATF vs BFIU Guidelines Conundrum in Bangladesh
Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash I still remember the day our team at a leading Bangladeshi fintech stumbled upon a massive structuring ring. It was a typical Monday morning when our system flagged over 500 suspicious transactions, all above the BDT 100,000 threshold for mobile financial services (MFS) like bKash and Nagad. As we dug deeper, we realized that these transactions were not just random - they were carefully crafted to evade our detection systems. This was a wake-up call for us, and it made us question our entire approach to AML compliance. So, what was going wrong? We were following the FATF recommendations to the letter, but somehow, these structuring rings were still slipping through the cracks. That's when we decided to take a closer look at the Bangladesh BFIU guidelines and how they differed from the FATF recommendations. The Hidden Problem As we delved into the BFIU guidelines, we realized that there were some key gaps between these guidelines and the FATF recom...