The European Central Bank has reached a preliminary decision to revoke the license of Malta’s Pilatus Bank following its chairman Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad’s arrest in the United States in March 2018 on charges of money laundering and sanctions violation.
One ECB official told Reuters that “the ECB’s supervisory board has already agreed to withdraw the bank’s license”, but it appears that the decision will be finalised only after some legal issues are resolved.
This episode is the latest in the series of money laundering scandals that have taken the European Union by storm over the last few months, including the ones involving Denmark’s Danske Bank and Latvia’s ABLV. With every new revelation, regulators gain a better understanding of the common practices used by financial criminals and become better equipped to identify and sanction money laundering across financial organisations.
Last updated on May 9th, 2023 at 09:08 pm
