Deutsche Bank fined £500m over money laundering

ONE of the City’s biggest investment banks has been hit with record fines totalling more than £500 million for “unacceptable” blunders that allowed suspected Russian criminals to launder billions of dollars.

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic imposed the penalties on Deutsche Bank for failing to carry out basic checks on $10 billion of transfers from Russia to offshore bank accounts.

London’s Financial Conduct Authority fined Deutsche £163 million, the biggest anti-money laundering punishment it has ever imposed on a bank, while New York state’s Department of Financial Services gave it a $425 million (£340 million) penalty.

Mark Steward, director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: “The size of the fine reflects the seriousness of Deutsche’s failings. We have told firms how to comply with our AML requirements and the failings are unacceptable. Other firms should take notice of today’s fine and look again at their own procedures.”

In total almost 6,000 suspicious share trades were executed by Deutsche Bank’s Russian subsidiary DB Moscow between April 2012 and October 2014.

The funds were converted from roubles to US dollars and flowed through Deutsche’s London offices to accounts in Cyprus, Estonia and Latvia.

DFS Superintendent Maria Vullo said: “This Russian mirror-trading scheme occurred while the bank was on clear notice of serious and widespread compliance issues dating back a decade.”