Anti-Financial Crime & Financial Crime Compliance
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ANALYSIS: The inside story of the catalogue of failures in NatWest’s £700M AML system which failed to detect Europe’s most audacious dirty money laundry

Image R-L: Justice Sara Cockerill, NatWest Chief Executive Alison Rose

By Stephen Rae for AMLi

Britain’s biggest bank NatWest has just been fined £275M for the most audacious money laundering scheme ever to appear before a court.

An organised crime gang was able to launder £375M in dirty money – two thirds of it in cash – through 50 branches without internal alarms going off – and when ultimately they did were ignored.

The “Fowler Oldfield Laundry” was so audacious that in one case a gang member brought refuse sacks so full with £700,000 in banknotes that they split open, spilling cash on the floor.

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