The Edge Singapore has published an article by Director Harsharan Kaur Bhullar, which first appeared in the June 2026 edition of TSMP’s thought leadership series, Forefront. Harsharan’s article offers a renewed perspective on how Singapore should tackle rapidly evolving financial crime syndicates.
Drawing on her past experience as an investigator with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and her work on landmark matters such as the $3 billion money laundering case of 2023–2025, Harsharan notes that Singapore’s anti-money laundering regime is strong but has room for improvement — a sentiment echoed by a recent report from the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Harsharan notes that MAS can reprimand certain capital markets individuals but lacks that power over payment services individuals and compliance officers, since the Payment Services Act and the Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA) omit a reprimand provision. This is a gap she highlights that the FSMA should close. Digital payment tokens, she argues, have become launderers’ preferred channel; MAS has responded with license revocations, fines, and tighter licensing rules, but penalties remain too modest and individual accountability too thin. Expanding COSMIC, MAS’s bank information-sharing platform, to include token providers and trust companies would strengthen detection, provided expansion stays selective to protect network integrity, she adds.