Swiss probe 4 banks over handling of dictator cash

BERN, Switzerland

Switzerland’s financial regulator FINMA has opened probes against four Swiss banks over their handling of hundreds of millions of dollars in assets linked to the deposed leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority says it examined 20 banks and found that four institutions had made mistakes warranting “enforcement proceedings.”

FINMA said in a report Thursday that three of the banks had done only exact searches of the names of persons on sanctions lists without checking other spellings.

The regulator says in two cases banks failed to notify FINMA they had a client relationship with persons on the sanctions lists.

FINMA didn’t identify the banks involved.

Source – The Associated Press