Fri, Jan 03, 2014

http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/finances/?doc=85734

The Bloomberg business news agency reports that JPMorgan Chase & Co, which has been told by U.S. regulators to bolster money-laundering safeguards, has stopped clearing dollar transfers for Latvian lenders. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a consent order in January 2013 after finding JPMorgan "has an inadequate system of internal controls and independent testing” for anti-money-laundering compliance. The bank "failed to identify significant volumes of suspicious activity" and to file reports alerting regulators, according to the order.

JPMorgan did not admit or deny wrongdoing in consenting to the regulatory orders at the time, saying in a statement that the bank has been "working hard to fully remediate the issues identified in the consent order."

JPMorgan said in August that it was reviewing its correspondent banking unit and would not take on new clients or new business.

The Financial and Capital Market Commission explains that JPMorgan has considerably reduced the volume of operations with most banks in several countries.

Those Latvian banks that had JPMorgan as one of their cooperation partners for dollar transactions have already switched to other cooperation partners, adds the Financial and Capital Market Commission.