Hungarian financial regulator fines 6 banks for failure to implement money laundering safeguards

The National Bank of Hungary, serving has the country’s financial regulator, said on Wednesday that it has fined six banks a combined 124.2 million forint for shortcomings related to the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing.

MagNet Bank, UniCredit Bank, Erste Bank, Sberbank, OTP Bank and K+H Bank were instructed to remedy their shortcomings.

The NBH carried out a target probe at the six banks to monitor the effectiveness of anti-money laundering controls related to activities involving significant cash flows for a period from 2018.

The banks had failed to report several suspicious transactions and internal controls were found to be inadequate, the investigation found.

Further, suspicious cash transactions were often filed inaccurately and management approval for significant transactions was missing.

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Source: MTI