Monday, December 13, 2021
Millions smuggled in garbage bags
British bank convicted in money laundering case
For years, a gold merchant in Great Britain took advantage of a bank’s sluggishness and smuggled millions of cash through the Treasury. Since NatWest-Bank does nothing against money laundering, it is now condemned.
Couriers walked into branches with garbage bags: but British bank NatWest did nothing to stop a gang of criminals from piling up hundreds of millions of pounds within five years at 50 of its branches, financial regulator FCA reported in court Was. In one case, money messengers pulled so much cash into a branch in Walsall in central England that the sacks were torn and the money was repackaged.
£365 million, including 264 million in cash, ended up in NatWest accounts, mostly in smaller towns, without the bank questioning their origin. In one branch alone it was 40 million euros. NatWest fined £265 million for money laundering. It is the first British bank to be found guilty of doing nothing against money laundering.
The Financial Commission said NatWest failed to monitor suspicious activity by a client – Fowler Oldfield, a Bradford gold dealer and jeweler – who was phased out after a police raid in 2016. Ultimately, all transactions in the millions were due to business.
The country’s largest commercial bank pleaded guilty in October to three counts of failing to properly investigate suspicious accounts of a Bradford gold dealer and jeweler between 2012 and 2016.
The case is also acrimonious because NatWest – at the time as the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) – was bailed out by the state during the financial crisis and the majority is still in the hands of the public. NatWest boss Alison Rose has apologized for deficiencies in money laundering supervision.
