Britain’s markets regulator on Wednesday said it had fined the United Kingdom division of India’s Canara Bank £8,96,100 (Rs 8.04 crore), and prohibited it from accepting new deposits for around five months, for breaching anti-money laundering laws. The Financial Conduct Authority said control failures at the bank affected almost all levels of its business and the structure of governance, Reuters reported.
The bank’s anti-money laundering risk management and governance framework was poor, and it risked undermining the British financial system, the regulator said. It added that warnings had been issued to Canara Bank since 2012, but to no avail.
“Canara was warned its money laundering controls were inadequate and so its failure to remediate them properly is at the more serious end of the range of sanctions,” the Financial Conduct Authority’s head of enforcement and market oversight Mark Steward said. The regulator said the bank had filled up positions in its UK division with staff from branches in India. These staff did not properly understand British legal and anti-money laundering requirements.
Krishna Kant, the bank’s head of compliance in London, said it had now resolved the problems. “The regulator has acknowledged that deficiencies have been rectified,” he added.
The Financial Conduct Authority also said that Canara Bank had qualified for a 30% discount to the original fine because it agreed to a settlement at an early stage of the regulator’s investigation.
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