South African central bank fines HSBC for lax money laundering controls

South Africa’s central bank yesterday fined HSBC’s local business 15 million rand (844,927 pounds) for weaknesses in its processes meant to detect money laundering and terrorism financing, and ordered the bank to fix the problems. The Prudential Authority (PA), which sits within the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and monitors the country’s lenders, said HSBC’s South African branch had already taken the measures required to address the issues.

“Certain weaknesses were identified in HSBC’s processes which inhibited HSBC from proactively detecting potential money laundering and the financing of terrorism,” the PA said in a statement. It added HSBC was not found to have facilitated any transactions involving money laundering or the financing of terrorism.

In a statement, the bank said it accepted the sanctions applied by the PA, which followed an inspection in 2016. “We can confirm that the issues identified by SARB during the 2016 inspection have been fully remediated,” the statement said. While small, the South African fine highlights that HSBC still faces problems with compliance long after pledging to toughen up its controls and after paying billions of dollars in fines for such failures.