15 October 2018

EurActiv: 90% of major European banks already sanctioned for money laundering

The huge scandal which recently rocked Danske Bank highlighted the deficiencies in money laundering checks. This problem is not unique to this Danish bank but concerns the entire European banking sector at various levels.

“Many of these sanctions have taken place in recent years, indicating that money laundering has become common practice,” according to a study by the British company Fortytwo Data, which markets anti-money-laundering solutions based on artificial intelligence. “The recent crises that have affected ING, Danske Bank and Deutsche Bank have only reinforced this impression and show that no bank, regardless of its size, is immune to sanctions.”

This could just as easily prove that the regulators are being stricter or are carrying out more frequent checks of established verification or warning mechanisms.

Many scandals have broken since the beginning of the year, such as the Danske Bank scandal (€200 billion of suspicious transactions conducted through its Estonian subsidiary between 2007 and 2015) or the ING scandal, which cost the finance director his job.

In early October, the European Union finance ministers therefore decided to strengthen anti-money laundering measures, assigning the role of European anti-money-laundering police to the European Banking Authority.

This authority was created in 2010 and will soon leave London to relocate in Paris. Currently, no entity oversees the harmonisation of the rules to combat money laundering in the European financial sector.

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