The Belgian branch of ING, anti-money laundering controls were not entirely in order. Over the past few months, the National Bank of Belgium has conducted ING Belgium thoroughly along the measuring board. The audit revealed several points of pain in the fight against money laundering, writes the Belgian newspaper De Tijd.
The investigation would show, among other things, that ING Belgium was not sufficiently vigilant in providing services as a ‘correspondent bank’. With this service, the bank arranges, inter alia, transactions in dollars or makes international transfers on behalf of foreign banks.
The audit is intended to lead to a series of recommendations to ING Belgium. It is not known whether the issue leads to sanctions. ING Belgium does not want to explain the National Bank’s investigation by the time.
It was previously known that the Polish daughter of the bank had a number of customers for years leaving dubious money in Russia. This is apparent from American state-secret documents and reports of suspicious transactions, which have been faithfully seen by the newspapers and the Financial Daily, the so-called FinCEN files.
