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The 5 Most Sensational AML Fines of 2020

If AML fines were a stock, they’d be a bull market!

In 2020, the monetary value of anti-money laundering fines rocketed: up by over 26% on 2019’s fines, and totaling a cool $10.4 billion.

That’s roughly the GDP of the entire island of Fiji, and higher than the GDP of another 36 nations around the globe!

It’s a number that’s increasing constantly: in 2019, AML fines stood at $8.14 billion – almost double the $4.27 billion in fines issued during 2018.

Which nations are paying the price?

With the notable exception of the States and northern Europe, it’s the Asia-Pacific region that’s bearing the brunt of the fines.

From 2015 onwards, the countries topping the AML Fine Charts have been:

  1. USA – $4,348,701,664
  2. Malaysia – $3,900,000,000
  3. Australia – $921,587,910
  4. Sweden – $550,169,770
  5. United Kingdom –  $199,306,927

The fines that made history

With the AML fines levied in 2020 surpassing any previous year by a staggering margin, it was the big financial institutions which were paying the price.

These 5 will go down in history as the big hitters in ‘The Fine Club’:

  • Deutsche Bank Jeffrey Epstein and Nordic bank scandals (USA) – $150 million – The Deutsche Bank colossus was involved in two separate scandals with EU and USA regulators in 2020. In Europe, the bank received a $16 million penalty (Nordic banks’ scandal). The USA case involved the late Jeffrey Epstein (convicted for sex trafficking and other abuses), and highlighted a lack of KYC compliance and risk monitoring.
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