Money laundering: UBS fined €6 million in Monaco
Keystone-SDA
Monaco’s financial markets watchdog has fined UBS €6 million for “numerous serious breaches” in money laundering and terrorist financing controls.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
“The number and repetition of these shortcomings demonstrate an overall failure in the institution’s compliance and internal control system”, reads the decision published on the website of the Monegasque Financial Security Authority (AMSF) and reported by the Gotham City and Inside Paradeplatz media.
Examining a period from 2018 to 2023, the AMSF noted delays in the transmission of suspicious transaction reports and in the preparation of its global risk assessment.
+ Dirty money does not need banking secrecy to thrive
UBS was also unable to comply with its the legal requirement to verify the identity, income and beneficiaries of its clients. This was “despite the intrinsic risk presented by its client base, more than half of which is classified as medium to very high risk”.
The Monaco subsidiary of UBS failed to identify and verify the identity of the chains of ownership and control of its customers with complex structures (more than three levels of ownership between the account holder and the beneficial owner).
More
More
Truth or tale: can any foreigner place millions at a Swiss bank?
Nor did it corroborate the background of its high-risk customers, such as politically exposed persons (PEPs), or check the consistency of certain transactions, points out the AMSF.
Unjustified transfers
In the 77-page verdict, several “transactional alerts” are cited by way of illustration, including two outgoing transfers of $400,000 each to a client’s personal accounts in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, for which the analysis was limited to the allegedly recurring nature of the transactions, without any precise documentation of their purpose.
Or an outgoing transfer of €500,000 to a jewellery company owned by a customer, which was justified on the basis of an invoice for only €73,000.
Contacted by AWP, Switzerland’s largest bank “takes note of the administrative sanction” and is currently examining this decision, reiterating that it is “committed to complying with the highest regulatory standards and remains focused on serving its customers”.
In addition to the financial penalty “proportionate to the average net banking income of the last three financial years” of the subsidiary, amounting to some €132.2 million, the AMSF has decided to publish the decision on its website in named form for a period of five years.
This decision, notified at the end of April, may be appealed within two months.
More
More
Swiss anti-money laundering office overwhelmed by surge in reports
Adapted from French by AI/mga
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch.