FCA fines Deutsche Bank £163m for serious anti-money laundering controls failings
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has slapped Deutsche Bank with a £163m fine over "serious anti-money laundering controls failings".
This is the largest financial penalty relating to money laundering that the regulator, or its predecessor the FSA, has ever imposed.
The City watchdog's fine comes after the German lender agreed to a $425m (£340m) settlement with New York's banking regulator over a trading scheme that moved $10bn out of Russia between 2011 and 2015.
The £163m fine represents a discount of 30 per cent as the bank agreed to settle at an early stage of the FCA's investigation. Deutsche said today that it is "co-operating with other regulators and law enforcement authorities, which have their own ongoing investigations into these securities trades".
“Financial crime is a risk to the UK financial system. Deutsche Bank was obliged to establish and maintain an effective AML control framework," said Mark Steward, director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA.
"By failing to do so, Deutsche Bank put itself at risk of being used to facilitate financial crime and exposed the UK to the risk of financial crime.
"The size of the fine reflects the seriousness of Deutsche Bank’s failings. We have repeatedly told firms how to comply with our AML requirements and the failings of Deutsche Bank are simply unacceptable. Other firms should take notice of today’s fine and look again at their own AML procedures to ensure they do not face similar action."