Attijariwafa Bank’s European Subsidiary Fined €500,000 for Anti-Money Laundering Failures

The AWBE company, owned by the Attijariwafa Euro Finances holding company, itself a 100% subsidiary of Attijariwafa Bank, is paying the price for its lack of commitment in the fight against money laundering. It all started with an inspection carried out in 2012. The control mission on internal control and AML-CFT had put AWBE on notice, in order to remedy the shortcomings observed, reports Eco Actu. Two years later, the establishment had implemented several corrective actions. However, a follow-up mission of the formal notice had found that the remediation project was not finalized.

October 3, 2018 to February 1, 2019: New on-site inspection on its AML-CFT system and the compliance of the marketing activity of the parent company’s products. At the end of this inspection, a report was signed on July 12, 2019. What next? The ACPR College, sitting in the "banking" sectoral sub-college, had, at its meeting of December 13, 2019, decided to open the disciplinary procedure.

Among the grievances, we can cite, among others, the classification of risks, the due diligence obligations (with regard to the implementation of additional due diligence measures towards politically exposed persons and with regard to the system for detecting and analyzing atypical transactions), the implementation of the obligation to report suspicious transactions to Tracfin, the internal control of the AML-CFT system (with regard to the second-level permanent control of AWBE on its European branches and the human resources dedicated to the periodic control of the AML-CFT system).

Examining this last grievance, the commission noted the insufficiency of human resources dedicated to the periodic control of the AML-CFT system within AWBE. Three people were responsible for the periodic control of the activities carried out by the 61 AWBE branches, half of which were in France and half in European countries at the end of 2017. Three other people had carried out this control in December 2018. Result: for the 2017 financial year, only 4 of the 10 missions initially defined by the establishment in its 2017-2019 three-year audit plan were carried out. Of the 6 missions initially planned and not carried out in 2017, only 3 were postponed to 2018, the other 3 having been postponed to 2019.