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U.K.’s FSA Singles Out AML Officer for Fine, Penalizes Swiss Bank

By Brian Monroe

The United Kingdom's banking regulator Tuesday penalized a Zurich-based financial institution and its former anti-money laundering officer a combined 540,000 pounds for broad failures in risk-ranking and enhanced due diligence procedures. The U.K.'s Financial Services Authority (FSA) said that Habib Bank Zurich AG underestimated the risk of approximately 67 percent of the accounts the agency had reviewed. In doing so, the Swiss bank removed Pakistan and Kenya from its list of high-risk jurisdictions because it believed it had "specialist knowledge" of the countries that mitigated its vulnerabilities to financial crime, the agency said. As a result, nationals of those countries...

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