CSSF issues over €7m in money laundering fines since 2019

Luxembourg’s financial regulator has issued more than €7 million in fines in almost 40 cases of anti-money laundering breaches in the last five years, Finance Minister Gilles Roth has said.

The Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) has handed out a total of 38 fines for violations of the country’s anti-money laundering and terrorism financing legislation since 2019, Roth said on Friday in response to a written parliamentary question by Greens deputy and former justice minister Sam Tanson.

The breakdown given by Roth does not outline which fines have been included in the total contained in his answer, as the overall total appears to be much higher than €7 million in the last five years. Since the start of 2019, major banks have been hit with large fines for anti-money laundering compliance gaps, such as Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), which was fined €4.6 million in 2020, Degroof Petercam, which was hit with a €1.56 million penalty last year and most recently, BGL BNP Paribas, which received a €3 million fine earlier this year.

The Luxembourg Times was unable to reach the finance ministry for clarification.

In “about a dozen” cases, the CSSF found that financial institutions had failed to flag suspicious client activity to the country’s financial crime unit, the Cellule de Renseignement Financier, Roth said.

The former justice minister raised questions after a €3 million fine was issued to one of Luxembourg’s largest banks, BGL BNP Paribas, earlier this year for gaps in anti-money laundering compliance in one of the biggest penalties ever given out by the CSSF.

The fine, which was issued in May but the details of which were only published in early July, followed an inspection at the bank carried out from May to November 2021.

On average, 13 months lapsed between an on-site inspection and CSSF informing the entity of a fine, Roth said.

“Several factors can influence the duration of an investigation,” Roth said, such as the quality of the documents presented during the audit or the complexity of the file. The period of delay also depends on the level of cooperation of the supervised company, the finance minister added.