KUALA LUMPUR – At the Cyber Defence and Security Exhibition and Conference 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid said Malaysia recorded RM1.5 billion ( US $385,000,000) in losses from Cybercrime, affecting more than 35,000 victims.
At the same time, public programs are trying to close basic gaps in online safety. Malaysia’s MyCyber Hero programme promotes digital literacy and warns people about scams, false information, and online exploitation. The goal is simple, help communities stay safer and make better choices online.
Across Southeast Asia, governments are also tightening legal cooperation. In November 2025, Southeast Asian nations signed the Asean Treaty on Extradition. The treaty supports faster extradition work across the region, targeting cross-border crimes like fraud, money laundering, and online scams. As a result, fleeing to a nearby Asean country becomes harder for offenders.
Regional cooperation also came up at the 15th China-ASEAN Prosecutors-General Conference in September 2025. China and Asean agreed to strengthen joint efforts and use digital tools against increasingly complex financial crimes. They also backed stronger steps to return criminal proceeds.
Many governments share the same concern that illicit money moves across borders quickly. Corruption and money laundering often follow that money. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said fast-moving technologies like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies create tougher problems for investigators and prosecutors, especially when tied to corruption and money laundering.
Still, China’s Prosecutor-General at the Supreme People’s Procuratorate repeated China’s commitment to work more closely with Asean partners to address cross-border financial crime.
Cybercrimes Spreading Faster
Corruption risk also remains part of the picture. In Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, eight Asean member states fell into a higher-risk tier for corruption exposure.
Meanwhile, cybercriminals and organized crime groups keep paying attention to Southeast Asia. One key reason is scale; the region had more than 516 million digital users in 2024. With so many people online, criminals find more targets, and scams spread faster.
Because of that, companies need to look closely at their supply chains and counterparties. Strong customer due diligence, clear risk assessments, and steady monitoring help spot red flags early. These steps can reduce financial exposure, prevent compliance breakdowns, and lower the risk of corruption and fraud.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has warned about highly advanced scam methods used by global crime groups. Bank phishing attacks keep rising, and so do e-commerce and investment scams. Criminal networks also rely on money movement to keep operating, so tracking illicit financial flows matters.
Malaysia has already seen how complex these money trails can get. The Royal Malaysia Police located, froze, and confiscated hundreds of thousands of euros in Malaysian bank accounts linked to shell companies.
Authorities said the accounts were allegedly used to launder funds from a scam that started in Finland. Those funds moved through several places, including the Netherlands, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom, before reaching Malaysia.
10-Year Cybercrime Action Plan
Asean has also built more structure around anti-money laundering work. During the 19th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime in September 2025, officials authorized the ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting on Transnational Crime (SOMTC) Working Group on Anti-Money Laundering.
The working group sits within a 10-year action plan focused on financial crimes, especially money laundering.
In Singapore, regulators have stepped up enforcement. In July 2025, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) took action against nine financial institutions and fined them a total of S$27.45 million. MAS linked the action to serious gaps in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing controls, following the record $3 billion money laundering case in August 2023.
Reviews found several weaknesses, including poor checks on clients’ sources of wealth, weak customer risk scoring, ineffective transaction monitoring, and limited follow-up after suspicious transaction reports.
MAS Deputy Managing Director Ho Hern Shin stressed the need for constant alertness. Firms need to meet MAS standards, follow industry best practices, keep controls strong, and raise concerns when needed.
MAS also issued S$960,000 in composition fines against five payment institutions in June 2025 for breaching key AML and CFT rules. Those breaches created serious compliance concerns and triggered firm regulatory action.
Risk-Based Approach
Singapore’s National Anti-Money Laundering Strategy 2024 uses a shared, risk-based approach built on three pillars: detection, enforcement, and prevention. It aims to stop illicit funds from entering Singapore’s financial system.
That strategy also depends on teamwork. Banks work with the Singapore Police Force to freeze accounts and funds when needed. In addition, the AML/CFT Industry Partnership (ACIP) created a Data Analytics Workgroup.
It lets banks share practical lessons on using data analytics for AML and CFT goals. Use of data analytics in financial crime controls has risen sharply as institutions try to keep up with faster payments and faster fraud.
On the rules side, MAS Notice 626, Prevention of Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism, Banks, sets required AML and CFT standards for banks operating in Singapore. Banks must run a risk-based program to identify exposures, measure risk, and apply controls and monitoring that match the risk.
The notice also sets expectations for customer due diligence (CDD). Banks must perform CDD when starting a new business relationship. They also must do it for wire transfers over S$1,500 when the sender is not in an existing relationship with the bank.
Assessing a Wide Set of Data
Banks should also check that customer transactions match the customer’s business activities, risk profile, and source of funds. Higher-risk customers, including politically exposed persons, require enhanced due diligence.
Vietnam has updated its approach, too. In September 2025, the State Bank of Vietnam issued Circular 27, which refreshed the AML framework. It requires reporting domestic transfers of VND 500 million and above, and overseas transfers of US$1,000 or more, to the state bank’s AML department.
This change increases transparency by tightening oversight of high-value transfers and improving the tracking of money movement.
Across Asia, financial institutions face more pressure to strengthen know-your-customer (KYC) controls as regulators push harder against money laundering and related crimes. KYC requires collecting, verifying, and assessing a wide set of data, including customer identity records and sanctions screening.
Real-time payments have exposed limits in older, manual checks. To meet real-time needs like Verification of Payee, many institutions are updating older systems and adding automated monitoring supported by artificial intelligence. This helps teams analyze live data faster, verify documents, and score risk sooner. Ongoing KYC checks also support continuous monitoring and more flexible customer risk profiles.
Stronger Legal Cooperation
Sanctions screening faces similar challenges. Older methods reviewed transactions one by one. With huge volumes of instant payments, transaction-only checks do not scale well. Because of that, many institutions are shifting toward customer-focused screening that relies on frequently updated sanctions data for timely compliance.
Tools can support that work. For example, SWIFT’s Transaction Screening System can screen payment messages against sanctions lists such as the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Consolidated List, the European Union Consolidated Sanctions List, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore List of Designated Individuals and Entities.
When systems flag sanctioned people or entities, automated sanctions monitoring combined with strong fraud checks can reduce exposure to cyber threats, fraud, and money laundering.
Financial crime in Southeast Asia now crosses borders with ease. Governments are responding through public education, stronger legal cooperation, regional collaboration, tighter AML frameworks, and tougher enforcement.
Still, organized networks and digital finance, including cryptocurrency and blockchain, keep testing regulators. That pressure makes deeper inter-government cooperation and stronger AML and CFT controls a continuing priority.
By Ong Bo Yang
Ong Bo Yang is a former senior associate in a Japanese bank and has written for more than 10 Southeast Asian newspapers.
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