Citi hit with record UK shipping-linked sanctions fine over Sovcomflot payment failures
- UK sanctions watchdog fines Citibank London £4.7m following 970 prohibited transactions worth £19.7m
- More than £5.4m in payments linked to sanctioned shipowner Sovcomflot were processed because compliance systems failed to identify affected accounts
- Regulator says control weaknesses, manual processing delays and sanctions screening failures undermined the effectiveness of UK-Russia sanctions
Citibank’s London branch has been hit with a £4.7m penalty, after UK regulators found sanctions control failures allowed hundreds of payments involving Russian shipping giant Sovcomflot and other designated entities to be processed after the invasion of Ukraine
