Reserve Bank fines HSBC for lax money laundering controls
While HSBC was not found to have facilitated money laundering, the regulator fined the bank for weaknesses in its detecting of money laundering and terrorism financing
Nov 9 (Reuters) -The Reserve Bank on Friday fined HSBC's local business 15 million rand ($1.1 million) for weaknesses in its processes meant to detect money laundering and terrorism financing, and ordered the bank to fix the problems. The Prudential Authority (PA), which sits within the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and monitors the country's lenders, said HSBC's South African branch had already taken the measures required to address the issues. "Certain weaknesses were identified in HSBC's processes which inhibited HSBC from proactively detecting potential money laundering and the financing of terrorism," the PA said in a statement. It added HSBC was not found to have facilitated any transactions involving money laundering or the financing of terrorism. In a statement, the bank said it accepted the sanctions applied by the PA, which followed an inspection in 2016. "We can confirm that the issues identified by SARB during the 2016 inspection have been fully remediated," the stat...
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