FINANCE Minister Colm Imbert said the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) reported a total of 958 suspicious transaction reports/suspicious activity reports (STRs/SARs) at the end of September 2022, with a total monetary value of $1,937,211,057.

The activities related to these reports were tax evasion, fraud, money laundering and drug trafficking.

While there was general compliance local with measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing for this period, there was an increase in requests from foreign law enforcement agencies and FIUs with the local FIU for cooperation on these matters.

Imbert made these disclosures when he addressed the House of Representatives on Monday.

Breaking downt the1,937,211,057, Imbert said 844 ( valued at $1,586,346,802) were completed transactions and 195 ( valued at $350,864,255) were attempted transactions.

"This represented a 24 percent decrease in completed transactions and a 68 percent decrease in attempted transactions when compared to the previous reporting period."

Imbert said 16 STRs/SARs contained both completed and attempted transactions.

"Suspicious activity ranked the highest among the five most common reasons for the submission of STRs/SARs to the FIUTT."

A total of 301 people fell within this category.

Imbert said, "This was followed by tax evasion (211 persons), fraud (196 persons), money laundering (155 persons) and drug Trafficking (35 persons)."

These accounted for 94 percent of the total STRs/SARs received by the FIU and 60 per cent of the total monetary value of all STRs/SARs submitted.

An analysis of 212 STRs/SARs generated a total of 69 intelligence reports (65 suspected money laundering cases and four suspected terrorism financing cases.

Imbert said 45 of these reports were spontaneous disclosures.

"Of these, 33 were submitted to local competent authorities whilst 12 were shared with foreign law enforcement agencies and FIUs."

The FIU received 16 requests from foreign authorities up to September 30, 2022.

Imbert said, "These requests featured a total of 85 subjects in contrast to the 26 recorded in the previous year."

The suspected criminal conduct in the majority of cases was financing of terrorism related, with four of the requests seeking intelligence on 34 subjects.

Requests the FIU received from foreign authorities originated mainly from the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe.

In the same period, Imbert said the FIU made 23 requests "comprising of 45 subjects to foreign authorities for financial intelligence and information."

These requests involved 11 cases of suspected fraud and five cases of drug trafficking.

Imbert said the FIU sent "the majority of (its) requests to foreign authorities in the Caribbean, the Americas and Asia."

The FIU disseminated 12 spontaneous disclosures to foreign FIUs and law enforcement agencies, compared to six in 2021.

Imbert said, "The spontaneous disse