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CBSL’s intelligence unit seeks info from several countries over suspicious financial activities
View(s):Between January and June 2025, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka’s (CBSL) Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has sent four requests for intelligence to the United Arab Emirates, three to Singapore, and two each to India, the United States, Hong Kong, the UK, and Thailand, according to the latest biannual statistics released by the Unit.
The FIU has also sent one request each to France, Belgium, Finland, Canada, Spain, Indonesia, and Madagascar. Similarly, the FIU has received two requests for intelligence from Bangladesh and one each from New Zealand, India, and the Netherlands, the data show.
FIU requests for intelligence are formal demands for information from obligated entities (like banks) or law enforcement, aimed at investigating suspicious financial activities such as money laundering or terrorism financing. These requests are crucial for the FIU to analyse financial data, identify illicit patterns, and then disseminate actionable intelligence to support the fight against financial crime, as they are not law enforcement bodies themselves.
Domestically, the FIU received a total of 1,468 “suspicious transaction reports” (STRs) in the first six months of this year, with the vast majority of them (89 per cent) from licensed banks regarding large, unusual cash deposits or withdrawals not consistent with the known pattern of transactions (amounting to 19 per cent of STRs).
The next largest category relates to transactions without economic rationale (17 per cent) and suspected trade-based money laundering (16 per cent). Trade-based money laundering is defined as the process of disguising the proceeds of crime and moving value through the use of trade transactions.
STRs, also called suspicious activity reports (SARs), are formal documents filed by financial institutions and other obligated entities with a national FIU to report suspected illegal financial activities like money laundering or terrorist financing. These reports are a vital part of anti-money laundering (AML) efforts, serving as an essential tool for law enforcement to detect, investigate, and prevent financial crimes by providing intelligence on illicit financial flows and unusual client behaviour.
The number of STRs received in the first six months of this year is higher than the number received during the corresponding period in 2024 (which was 879 reports). And the proportion of STRs received from licensed banks decreased this year to 89 per cent from 91 per cent last year. Separately, the proportion of STRs from licensed finance companies rose from five per cent to seven per cent.
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