Šiaulių Bankas is strengthening Anti-Money Laundering control

The Board of the Bank of Lithuania (BoL), having analysed the conclusions of the targeted inspection report of Šiaulių Bankas, imposed a penalty of EUR 880 thousand and obliged Šiaulių Bankas to eliminate the identified breaches and deficiencies.

The penalty imposed will not adversely affect the bank's sustainable business continuity and majority of the identified breaches and deficiencies have been addressed even before the inspection results had been discussed by the Board of the BoL.

Šiaulių Bankas has not detected any cases where breaches and deficiencies identified in the BoL inspection report would have been used for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes.

“We are giving top priority to the anti-money laundering - we are one of the Lithuanian banks that have developed the AMLCTF systems themselves and improved them according to the changing requirements. This is confirmed by the bank's significant additional investments in this area. We appreciate the observations and recommendations for improvement of the processes provided by the Bank of Lithuania. We have eliminated most of the deficiencies prior to the start of the inspection and, also, eliminated part of them at the time when the inspection findings have been prepared”, - said Vytautas Sinius, Chief Executive Officer of Šiaulių Bankas. 

Šiaulių Bankas continues its scheduled targeted actions to strengthen the field of AMLCTF: it automates customer assessment solutions, improves risk assessment methodologies and customer risk evaluation. In order to strengthen the internal control, Šiaulių Bankas establishes a separate Know Your Customer and Analysis Department, improves the process of monitoring of business relations and transactions of its clients, and increases the transaction monitoring team, which has tripled over the  recent year. Šiaulių Bankas has planned to allocate over EUR 1.4 million in total for the AMLCTF strengthening.