Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC said Wednesday a deferred-prosecution agreement with U.S. authorities over ABN Amro NV, a Dutch bank it acquired in 2007, would end Dec. 31, with the bank completing its obligations under the settlement.
RBS settled in May 2010 with the Justice Department, agreeing to forfeit $500 million while admitting that ABN Amro illegally helped clients from countries like Iran, Cuba, Libya and Sudan move hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system.
More than $3.2 billion involving shell companies and high-risk transactions with foreign financial institutions flowed through the bank’s New York branch, according to court documents filed at the time. In addition, the branch willfully didn’t implement an anti-money laundering compliance program from 1998 through 2005.
Between 1995 and 2005, the bank stripped names and references from payment messages that would have automatically triggered a red flag on transactions with sanctioned countries, the court documents said. It entered into a one-year deferred-prosecution agreement (pdf) as a part of the settlement, and the agreement was extended by a federal court to Dec. 31 to allow RBS more time to comply with the obligations.
