ABN AMRO has been fined 3 million euros by the German financial regulator BaFin. That fine was already imposed at the end of last month, but the German authorities only now announced the news. The board of the German branch of ABN AMRO did not have sufficient insight into the extent to which that branch complied with all the rules in the 2019 financial year.
According to a spokeswoman for the bank, an important report from the department that monitors compliance with legislation was not sent to the board of the German branch in Frankfurt on time. According to her, ABN AMRO has now taken measures to prevent this mistake from being made again.
money laundering
The violation carries a maximum fine of 10 percent of turnover or 5 million euros. BaFin does not explain how it came to the fine of 3 million euros. That fine is already final, which means that ABN AMRO can no longer appeal.
For the bank, it is relatively not a very large fine. In 2021, ABN AMRO settled with the Dutch Public Prosecution Service for 480 million euros because the bank had failed to combat money laundering. The bank’s annual profit last year amounted to almost 1.9 billion euros. The financial group benefited, among other things, from rising interest rates.
In Germany, ABN AMRO has been mentioned for some time in an investigation into a tax trick in which banks gave investors the option of reclaiming tax multiple times, even though it was only paid once. The investigation into this affair, also known as the cum/ex fraud, is still ongoing. The spokeswoman for the bank emphasizes that the current fine is completely separate from this.
