Bank of Scotland fined for breaching Russia financial sanctions

Bank of Scotland has been fined £160,000 by a UK Treasury body for processing payments that breached Russia financial sanctions rules.

The bank processed 24 payments to or from a personal current account held by a British citizen on the Government’s list of sanctioned individuals, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) found.

The payments, made between February 8 and February 24 2023, totalled £77,383.

The UK is among nations to have imposed sanctions on sectors, businesses and individuals who may be facilitating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Most individuals that are sanctioned under the OFSI are subject to an asset freeze and an investment ban.

The OFSI found that the UK-designated person opened an account at Halifax in late 2020, using a UK passport that contained a spelling variation of their name that differed from the one on the sanctions list.

This meant the account was not flagged as a potential match by the bank’s automatic sanctions screening system.

The penalty for Bank of Scotland, which is part of Lloyds Banking Group, was cut by 50% thanks to it voluntarily disclosing the breaches a month after the payments were made.

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