, who acted as director of enforcement at the Central Bank during the recession, explains the lengths that banks must go to in order to police their business.
“Banks are required to verify and identify their customers, know who their customer’s beneficial owner is and have sufficiently detailed knowledge of their customers’ business model and the customer’s clients, and an understanding of the economic reason for the transactions they process,” he said. In recent years, both of the Irish banks named in the files have fallen foul over their enforcement of these types of rules in other cases. In 2016,
Bank was fined €3.3 million for breaches of the Money-laundering and Terrorist Financing Act, when “significant failings” in the bank’s framework were identified.was fined €3.15 million for similar failings, including the failure to report six suspicious transactions to the Garda and Revenue Commissioners. At the time, the Central Bank’s director of enforcement said the bank’s activities “fall far short of the standard expected of one of Ireland’s largest retail banks”.
The State has also found itself in the firing line over the slow pace of reforms in the area. “While Ireland has some strong theft and fraud legislation, it has left itself open to criticism and potential exploitation by criminals through the delay of implementing key EU money-laundering laws on at least two occasions,” Oakes says.