SINGAPORE — More reports of suspicious financial transactions were received last year, rising 25 per cent from 17,975 in 2012 to 22,417 last year, the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) said in its annual report released yesterday.

Highlighting the challenges of regulating a changing financial landscape, the annual report also noted that the number of requests for assistance from financial intelligence units from other countries rose from 111 in 2012 to 164 last year — a 48 per cent increase.

The CAD’s Suspicious Transaction Reporting Office (STRO), which receives and analyses the reports of suspicious financial transactions, added that it provided intelligence to foreign authorities in 341 instances last year, compared with 160 in 2012. The information gathered from these exchanges is used to detect criminal activities, such as money-laundering and terrorist financing.

Citing Singapore’s openness as an international transport hub and financial centre as a reason the country is vulnerable to such illicit activities, CAD director Tan Boon Gin said the increasing trend of criminal activity has necessitated restructuring within the CAD to tackle these issues.

The STRO was thus elevated from a branch to a full-fledged division to deal with the influx of reports.

Apart from the overseas threat, emerging trends, such as complex fraudulent investment schemes, and “sophisticated” organised crime groups here are also a cause for concern for the CAD.

They include what the CAD calls “increasingly innovative business models”, such as those that exploit non-financial products, such as land and gold, as investment opportunities and weave an “intricate web” of transactions between firms to disguise a lack of genuine activities — giving rise to difficulties during investigations.

To address this, the CAD restructuring created the Investment Fraud Division, whose investigations led to the conviction of two directors in the high-profile Profitable Plots case last month. The land-banking firm had been accused of cheating investors of about US$2.5 million (S$3.12 million).

Mr Tan said the CAD’s collective efforts have contributed to Singapore’s highest-ever level of money laundering prosecutions and convictions, and the seizure of more than S$115 million of suspected criminal proceeds last year.