Allied Irish Banks hit with €2.3m fine for AML fails
Allied Irish Banks (AIB) has been fined €2.3 million by Ireland’s central bank for compliance failures over anti-money laundering (AML) and terrorist financing laws.
AIB was reprimanded for six breaches of the law – which occurred between July 2010 and July 2014. It has admitted to these breaches.
The central bank says AIB failed to “report suspicious transactions without delay” to tax authorities and police. AIB didn’t conduct due diligence on customers whose accounts predated the first Irish AML laws in 1995. It also found breaches with regards to AIB’s policies and procedures concerning AML and anti-terror financing in “a number of areas,” including its trade finance activities.
This bad news come weeks ahead of a potential sale of 25% of the bank on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Bloomberg says the Irish government, which controls 99.9% of AIB as a result of a bailout during the financial crisis, “may sell part of its holding in the bank between May and July and raise as much as €3 billion”.
Today (27 April), AIB released a trading update for its Q1 2017 performance. There is no mention of the fine, but its CEO, Bernard Byrne, says it has had a “good start to the year” and its “performance this quarter was in line with expectations with strong profitability, a stronger balance sheet, significant capital generation and further improvement in the bank’s risk profile”.
AIB’s fine is not in isolation. In November, the central bank also fined Ulster Bank €3.3 million for AML and terrorist financing failures.
In terms of its tech, AIB is believed to be in the market for new digital banking software. Banking Technology understands a number of vendors have done their demos for the bank, Infosys with its Finacle digital banking platform among them.
