Unlock the Digest of the editor for free
Lithuanian supervisors have hit Revolut with a fine of € 3.5 million on shortcomings in his money laundering, which marks the largest financial fine in the British fintech.
The Bank of Lithuania – who regulates Revolut’s activities in Europe together with the European Central Bank – said on Tuesday that it had imposed the fintech after identifying “violations and shortcomings in monitoring business relations and [transactions]”.
These “have led the bank to not always identify well -suspected monetary activities or transactions by customers,” said De Waakhond.
In 2022, Revolut was fined € 70,000 by the Bank of Lituania for not submitting its financial statements on time.
The fast -growing fintech, which was last appreciated at $ 45 billion, has investigated the robustness of his checks. In 2021, Revolut obtained a full European banking license from the authorities in Lithuania, so that it can operate as a bank in the region.
But the application for a banking license with British supervisors is stuck for more than three years after it encountered a series of problems, including Auditor BDO -warning in 2023 that the design of his IT system meant that there was a risk that the majority of 2021 income was “considerably wrong”.
Revolut said it is committed to the highest standards of compliance with the regulations and had collaborated with the Bank of Lithuania to take immediate action to tackle the procedural shortcomings.
“We continue to invest to ensure that we have the best in class controls in the fight against financial crime,” Revolut said.
A person near Revolut, the most valuable start-up in Europe, said that the central bank had not identified any confirmed cases of money laundering and that its findings were aimed at improvements in his existing checks.
They added that the fine represented less than 0.5 percent of the company’s turnover in 2023, far below the maximum potential fine of 10 percent for violations of Lithuanian anti-money laundering laws.
The Central Bank said that the European Bank of Revolut ‘had recognized the identified violations and shortcomings, taken action on its own initiative to eliminate them [and] prepared and agreed a plan to eliminate the violations and shortcomings. “
Revolut received a British banking license with restrictions in July last year. It is expected that it will leave a so -called mobilization phase, so that it can complete the attitude of his processes before being launched in his home market as a fully -fledged bank later this year.
Digital banks have supervised supervision in recent years, because supervisors have expressed concern that their internal checks have not kept up their rapid growth. The UK Financial Conduct Authority warned in 2022 that an increase in reports to the National Crime Agency ‘had expressed concern about the adequacy of [neobanks’] Check when you accept new customers ”.
Starling Bank received a fine of £ 29 million last year by the FCA after it had accused the Challenger Bank of “shocking lax” checks against financial crime.
The British watchdog individually carries out a civil probe to check the money from money at Revolut Rival Monzo Bank, the bank said in her annual report in June last year, after he relegated it from a criminal issue.
Additional reporting by Richard Milne