Barclays Bank Plc Hit With Yet Another Fine

Barclays Bank Plc has been hit with a number of large fines this year for numerous violations ranging from manipulating forex rates to not having proper financial checks in place to monitor high value fiscal transactions.

The bank was recently pulled up by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and fined an additional £72 million for not having proper security checks in place and not carefully monitoring financial transactions of “politically exposed persons” who had conducted financial transactions that amounted to £1.88 billion.

The FCA noticed that Barclays Bank Plc violated standard banking procedures and followed a lower level of monitoring as the bank was focused on bringing in new customers on board quickly and hence did not want to go through its required financial checks which would have taken longer to complete.

The FCA stated that Barclays earned revenues close to £52.3 million from these high end clients and kept all these deals confidential. The £72 million fine was the biggest fined imposed by UK regulators for financial crime violations.

In a statement, Mark Steward, director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said:

Barclays ignored its own process designed to safeguard against the risk of financial crime and overlooked obvious red flags to win new business and generate significant revenue. This is wholly unacceptable. Firms will be held to account if they fail to minimise financial crime risks appropriately.

The FCA stated that Barclays went to great lengths to accommodate the business interests of its clients even though the bank was fully aware that it was violating its financial policies, as it was willing to put its clients’ needs before regulated and mandatory banking procedures. The FCA confirmed that while the bank was not part of any financial scheme or crime, the fact that the bank made these exceptions were completely unacceptable. Barclays could have been hit with a much bigger fine by the FCA decided to go easy and reduce the fine by 30 percent.

Barclays responded to these charges by stating that the FCA did not detect any financial crimes concerning its clients or financial transactions but did admit that banking policies and procedures had been violated. The bank stated that they were fully cooperating with the FCA and would use these findings to further strengthen their policies and training programs to ensure that Barclays is fully compliant with all banking procedures and financial policies in the UK.

Barclays Bank is also being investigated for tampering with the (London Interbank Offered Rate) LIBOR rate which could lead to a $100 Million fine.