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Bank of Cyprus Cuts Thousands of Eastern European Accounts after AML Review

By Paul Peachey

The largest lender in Cyprus dropped 3,500 high-risk clients and four-fifths of its third-party business introducers over the past two years to reduce its exposure to financial crime, a senior executive with the bank said. The compliance review that led Bank of Cyprus to terminate the accounts followed the country's agreement to reform its anti-money laundering regime in exchange for a €10 billion bailout package in 2013, amid concerns that lax rules, low taxes and little to no corporate transparency had made the island a haven for billions of euros of suspicious funds from Russia and elsewhere. Bank of Cyprus...

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