UKO on August 12, 2013 - 3:54am

http://leadership.ng/news/120813/uk-regulator-fines-gtb-uk-poor-money-laundering-checks

The United Kingdom subsidiary of Guaranty Trust Bank has been fined by markets regulators for money laundering offences.

Guaranty Trust, UK was fined 525,000 pounds ($815,000 or N130.4 million) by the UK markets regulator for failing to have controls in place to prevent money laundering.

Bloomberg reported that the bank is accused of failing to document risks posed by higher-risk customers when it set up a London office in 2008, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.

“Banks are at the front line in ensuring the proceeds of crime do not enter the U.K. financial system,” Tracey McDermott, director of enforcement at the FCA, said in the statement.

“GT Bank’s failures were serious and systemic and resulted in an unacceptable risk of handling the proceeds of crime,” the statement added.

Guaranty Trust Bank opened its U.K. subsidiary in 2008 offering retail and wholesale banking to private and corporate clients, according to the regulator.

“We have fully co-operated with the FCA in its investigation and we have accepted the findings,” Ade Adebiyi, Managing Director of the U.K. unit, responded in an e-mailed statement.

“The FCA found no evidence that GTB UK did in fact handle any proceeds of crime,” he said.

The bank received the FCA’s standard 30 per cent discount for settling early.