GunnAllen Financial, a broker-dealer based in Tampa, Fla., was ordered to pay a $750,000 penalty to settle charges that it had a lax anti-money laundering program and had made other compliance violations. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees nearly 5,100 brokerage firms, cited GunnAllen for operating with weak customer identification procedures and trading with companies with which it had conflicts of interest. Finra also ordered the firm's head trader's supervisor, Kelley McMahon, to pay a $25,000 penalty. Between June 2003 and June 2005, GunnAllen's AML programs were "deficient or not enforced" and the company failed to "monitor, analyze and...
Securities are becoming more attractive to money launderers because of the speed of transactions and the large number of high-dollar trades on exchanges with little oversight, a European anti-money laundering watchdog said Tuesday.