On September 19, 2007, the Central Bank of Russia revoked the licence of the Moscow FALCON bank, citing violations of anti-laundering legislation. Specifically, the bank failed to report operations subject to mandatory control, send relevant notifications to the Federal Financial Monitoring Service sporadically and did not apply identification procedures to its clients in a proper way. The bank violated cash discipline and submitted unauthentic reports to BANK OF RUSSIA. In the first half of 2007, residents transferred roughly R20 billion in suspicious transactions to five British companies and three offshore firms. Following non-resident instructions, the money was transferred in favour of foreign companies which were clients of banks in Ukraine, Moldova, Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Over the period, the bank issued R5.5 billion in cash to its clients.
Source: BANKI.RU, September 21, 2007
