Having trumped up the dangers of unstructured cryptocurrencies earlier this 12 months, Dutch commercial enterprise institution ABN Amro NV finds itself inside the thick of a significant money-laundering scandal.

On Sept. 26, Bloomberg reported on information of a prison probe into the commercial enterprise institution’s alleged failures to report suspicious minutes and to adequately vet its purchasers. ABN AMRO – which girdle over 50% government-owned after a high-priced bailout – detected its shares hunch by as a batch as 10.3% in Amsterdam buying and selling.

This represents the best plummet since June 2019, with the commercial enterprise institution’s Additional Tier 1 bonds falling au fond the most in six months, as Bloomberg notes.

Investigation below anti-money laundering and terror funding legal guidelines

The Dutch prosecutor’s work additive disclosed that not exclusively does ABN AMRO face examination over its alleged compliance failures, even so it is unremarkably being investigated below Dutch anti-money laundering and terror funding legal guidelines. Exact particulars of the investigation haven’t been disclosed.

Following a warning from the Netherlands’ central commercial enterprise institution, ABN AMRO had introduced this July that it wanted to conduct higher due diligence into all of its 5 million retail purchasers.

It has spent 220m to bolster its procedures in its client banking, bank card and small enterprise lending operations – taking a 114 million provision for checks in Q2 on with 85 million in 2019. The commercial enterprise institution had indicated it may face sanctions from regime even so noted that it couldn’t put together for a potential superb as the amount couldn’t be estimated on the time.

As the Financial Times has reported, ABN AMRO additively tripled its employees numbers to over 1,400 in areas remindful of compliance, monetary system crime and anti-money laundering.

The situation imperils the Dutch regime’s pledge to at long las dump its 56% stake inside the commercial enterprise institution – and the uncertainty is increased by the announcement of CEO Kees van Dijkhuizen to go away when his period of time ends in April 2020.

Notably, ABN AMRO’s rival ING Group final 12 months paid a record fine for “serious shortcomings” in working to forestall monetary system crime, facilitating cash laundering by means of its accounts for years.

Banks below examination

ABN AMRO’s disaster comes hot on the heels of a scandal involving Danske Bank’s unit in Estonia, whose former head was found dead earlier this week. He had been a witness – although not a suspect – in a significant money-laundering probe into the unit.

Also this week, regulation enforcement officers raided Deutsche Bank AG this week in reference to the Danske Bank scandal.

This May, ABN AMRO’s senior press officer disclosed that the commercial enterprise institution would discontinue its plans to launch a guardian Bitcoin (BTC) pockets, having complete that “cryptocurrencies because of their unstructured nature are at the moment too risky assets for our clients to invest in.”