adminJohannesburg — South Africa’s central bank fined the country’s four largest lenders a total of 125 million rand ($11.8 million) after finding deficiencies in their controls to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
The fines ranged from R60 million for Standard Bank Group Ltd (SBK), Africa’s biggest lender, to 10 million rand for Barclays Plc’s South African unit, the Pretoria-based South African Reserve Bank said in a statement on its website yesterday.
The penalties for FirstRand Ltd (FSR) and Nedbank Group Ltd (NED) were 30 million rand and 25 million rand respectively.
“The danger of not fulfilling compliance measures can open the door to criminals abusing our institutions,” Murray Michell, director of the SARB’s Financial Intelligence Centre, said in a separate statement.
The central bank said the fines don’t indicate that the banks facilitated transactions involving money laundering and terrorist financing.
Identifying and verifying customer details, maintaining records and managing and processing potentially suspicious transactions were three deficiencies identified.
Nedbank and Standard Bank also require better controls for detecting property associated with terrorists, the regulator said.
Standard Bank and Barclays’s Absa Bank said they have taken steps to address the weaknesses identified by the central bank, while Nedbank said it has prepared a plan of remedial action.
FirstRand said it was committed to resolving outstanding weaknesses, including anti-money laundering monitoring.
The seven member FTSE/JSE Africa Banks Index declined 0.4 percent as of 11.13AM in Johannesburg, led by FirstRand, which fell 1 percent.— Bloomberg
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