New York regulator fined $235 mln Italy’s Intesa San Paolo

Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s biggest retail bank, will pay $235 million to New York’s financial regulator for anti-money laundering failures and violations of bank secrecy laws.
The big Italian bank failed to flag questionable transactions and deviated from policies designed to root out wrongdoing, which "seriously (compromised) the security of the international financial system," said Maria Vullo, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services.

"DFS uncovered sweeping violations requiring that this institution must make immediate and fundamental changes in the way it conducts business," she said.
The bank also trained employees to handle Iranian transactions so they could not easily be tied to sanctioned entities and deliberately concealed information from bank examiners, the regulator said.
Many of the violations date back a decade or more, although the regulator found the bank failed to properly monitor and review transactions as recently as this year.

New York’s fine against Intesa Sanpaolo follows the regulator’s actions earlier this year over anti-money laundering violations by other foreign banks.
In a statement, Intesa Sanpaolo said the penalty related to "certain weaknesses and deficiencies in the anti-money laundering controls, policies and procedures of the bank's New York branch."

Under Thursday's settlement, Intesa agreed to extend for up to two years an independent consultant to upgrade its anti-money laundering system.