Citibank has been fined nearly £5m by UK regulators after its London branch was found to have violated the UK's sanctions regime on Russia. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) determined that the bank processed £19.7m in illicit transactions through 970 payments.
OFSI ruled that Citibank failed to freeze 24 commercial bank accounts belonging to 11 companies controlled by a single designated Russian individual. Approximately £4.3m of the £5.9m in funds passed through by this client was processed within 24 hours of the individual being placed on the sanctions watchlist.
The bank's screening software reportedly failed to generate alerts for PAO Sovcomflot due to not recognising the Russian corporate prefix "PAO". Additionally, an automated payment processor selected Russian correspondent banks from an internal list that was not screened against sanctions lists before being added to transactions.
Citibank received a 20 per cent settlement discount for cooperation, reducing its fine to £4.7m. However, OFSI noted that the bank delayed reporting frozen assets on 53 occasions, with delays extending up to 518 days.