Verdict may have far-reaching implications over dodgy clients
Issue is whether financial institutions should be forced to accept risky customers or handle suspicious transactionsShould banks be forced to accept a client who could be on the wrong side of the law?
Russian billionaire Boris Rotenberg is suing four Nordic banks for not doing business with him. The oligarch, an associate of President Vladimir Putin, is on the US sanctions list. But Rotenberg says that due to his status as a dual citizen of Russia and Finland banks based in Europe must process his transactions.
Jakob Dedenroth Bernhoft, a Copenhagen-based lawyer specialising in compliance and money-laundering issues, says whatever is decided in the Helsinki district court on Monday will set an important precedent. There’s a recent precedent of a European bank collapsing after it came under threat of being excluded from the US financial system: Latvia’s ABLV Bank wasin February 2018 after the US treasury department proposed banning it, saying the bank helped process illicit transactions.“If the banks think the transactions from Russia are dirty money in some way, they are obliged to refuse to receive them,” Bernhoft says.
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