The Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) in Luxembourg has imposed fines of €109,000 and €17,200 for compliance failings on abrdn Investments Luxembourg S.A.
The fine of €17,200 related to failings in relation to AML/CFT, and included in these failings was failure to “perform initial name screenings controls against international and European financial sanctions lists”.
The CSSF had conducted on-site inspections in 2020.
Lithuania’s Financial Crimes Investigation Service has imposed a fine of €8.23m for breaches of the EU’s sanctions and a fine of €1.06m for breaches of Lithuania’s Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.
The company fined is UAB Payeer. The press release notes that the company did not cooperate with the investigation and did not provide responses to questions raised.
The investigation commenced after an inspection in 2023 that was conducted after Payeer commenced its operations in Lithuania.
Payeer operated a crypto exchange at Payeer.com which allowed customers to make transfers to or from Russian banks that were designated under EU sanctions.
The AML fine relates to the failure to conduct KYC and the failure to report suspicious transactions.
The press release notes that Payeer had revenues of more than €164m during the 1.5 years of its breaches, but does not note what proportion of this came from prohibited activity.
As part of its Annual Report, the Unità di Informazione Finanziaria per l’Italia within the Bank of Italy has announced investigations into suspicions of illicit money flows from Italy to Russia via third countries.
No further details are available at this time including the amounts at stake, the identities of the third countries, or whether a referral has been made to the criminal authorities.
It is also unclear whether the transfers are alleged to have been made for or on behalf of designated persons.
LHV Pank in Estonia has today issued a press release to say that it intends to challenge a fine of €300,000 imposed on it by the FIU for breaching EU sanctions.
According to the press release the fines were imposed in relation to three incidents (two in 2022 and one in 2023) where the bank is accused of insufficiently rigorous due diligence and of permitting a transaction in breach of sanctions.
The press release does not state which sanctions regime the conduct relates to.
The bank says it takes regulatory compliance seriously and will challenge the fine in court.
Malta’s Sanctions Monitoring Board (the “SMB”) has, for the first time , imposed a fine for breach of EU sanctions.
The company in question was ArabMillionaire Limited. The SMB publishes the names of all company’s fined more than €800, but the size of the fine is otherwise unspecified.
Also unspecified is the conduct giving rise to the fine, but it was said to have been identified “at the time of supervisory examination conducted between June and August 2020”.
It is unclear when the fine was issued as this information is not specified on the website and the Sanctions Monitoring Board has confirmed that such information is confidential.
ArabMillionaire operated as an online casino (trading as Playfooz.com) based in Dubai. It’s licence from the Malta Gaming Authority was suspended in October 2022, and then cancelled in October 2023.
It has been reported that alongside other regulatory failings part of the reason for these actions by the Malta Gaming Authority was non-compliance with money laundering and counter terrorist financing.
The Luxembourg financial services regulator, the CSSF, has today published a report of an administrative penalty imposed on Fuchs & Associés Finance SA.
The fine was €785,000.
Some of the compliance failings relate to AML and KYC more generally, and some were specific to sanctions. The sanctions-specific failings were:
Reuters has reported that the European Central Bank is gearing up to order that the Italian Bank UniCredit must reduce its Russia-related business.
Reuters has also reported that the ECB is to similarly order Austria’s Raiffeisen bank to reduce its Russian lending by 65% and to reduce its involvement in Russia-related payments.
The ECB did not comment on either story.
The ECB has the power to fine non-compliance with such orders.
The UK’s Charity Commission has issued a press release stating that it had launched a statutory investigation into the activities of Aozma Sultana who is designated under the UK’s terrorism sanctions.
The Charity Commission has confirmed that Aozma Sultana, by virtue of being a designated person, and so subject to an asset freeze, has been removed from any trustee or senior management role in the charity Gaza Now.
The Commission is also investigating the role of two companies, Aakhirah Limited and Al-Qureshi Executives is possible misappropriation of funds by the charity.
This is not the first action taken by the Charity Commission in relation to sanctioned trustee. In December 2023, it issued a press release in relation to action taken against Dr Viatcheslav Kantor who is designated under the UK’s Russian sanctions.
Last week the compliance and oversight department of the Cyprus Bar Association raided the premises of the company Finsol controlled by a Greek national regulated by the CBA.
The raid is part of a wider investigation which includes the Cypriot Anti-Money Laundering Authority and Cyprus police.
While the investigation includes allegations unrelated to sanctions, part of the investigation, further to our earlier post, includes allegation of back-dated asset transfers in relation to the company Santinomo Limited, allegedly in an attempt to avoid the impact of a new designation.
It is being reported that the UK and the US are undertaking a joint investigation into $20 billion in crypto currency transactions said to be in breach of Russian sanctions.
The payments under scrutiny flowed through the Moscow-based Garantex crypto exchange, utilizing the dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether.
The original story was published by Bloomberg, behind a paywall.
It is also being reported that the National Crime Agency and HM Treasury have provided no comment in relation to the investigation.
