PRESS RELEASE
Queen's Bank Sanctioned
for Money Laundering
March 28, 2012 (EIRNS)—The first sentence of the Financial Times front-page March 27 article reads:
"Coutts & Co., the private bank used by Queen Elizabeth II, was hit with the U.K.'s biggest-ever fine for violating money-laundering rules after it failed to conduct proper checks on almost three-quarters of clients that held politically sensitive positions."
Need we say more?
The Financial Services Authority reviewed 103 files of "high risk" individuals from Coutts Bank, and found that 73 (71%) showed a routine failure to identify "high risk" clients and so-called "Politically Exposed Persons," i.e., corrupt politicians or government officials, deemed as "unacceptable risk." It is not known whether one of those files belonged to the most famous "Politically Exposed Person" and "high risk" drug pusher, the Queen of England.
Coutts Bank is now the private banking wealth division of the Royal Bank of Scotland, leader of the notorious Rothschild-controlled Inter-Alpha Group of banks, and is now majority-owned by the British government. The FSA also investigated four other RBS-affiliated banks.
Coutts's fine is related to a three-year period from the end of 2007, a time when it was paying bonuses to staff on the basis of the number of new customers they signed up. About 1% of its clients were classified as "high risk."
Coutts had already been fined for not preventing its accounts being used to finance terrorist organizations, as part of a £5.6 million fine levied against RBS in 2010. It was also hit with a £6.3 million fine last November for failing to sufficiently explain the risks associated with savings products linked to failed U.S. insurer AIG. In total, RBS has been fined more than £25 million, the most of any U.K. bank.
At least one press agency, Iran's Press TV, covered the news by referencing the charges by French Presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade on the Queen's role in drug money laundering.
