Dutch ABN Amro Bank NV yesterday said it had reached a 480 million euro (US$576.8 million) settlement with prosecutors in the Netherlands over money laundering allegations, which would affect its first-quarter results.
ABN Amro said in a statement that it had agreed to pay a fine of 300 million euros and 180 million euros as disgorgement reflecting “the seriousness, scope and duration of the identified shortcomings” in combating money laundering.
The prosecution service said in a statement that its investigation was ongoing and that three former board members, who it did not name, had been identified as suspects said to be “effectively responsible for violation” of the anti-money laundering act.
Danske Bank A/S said its chief executive officer Chris Vogelzang, who had previously served on ABN’s executive board, was resigning after being targeted in a Dutch money laundering probe.
Vogelzang, who had been chief executive officer for less than two years at Denmark’s biggest bank, is to be replaced by Danske’s head of risk management, Carsten Egeriis.
Danske is itself the subject of multiple investigations into money laundering in the US and Europe. Vogelzang had been brought on board in 2019 in an effort to help the bank clean up its act and rehabilitate its image as a law-abiding, transparent institution.
“I am very surprised by the decision by the Dutch authorities,” Vogelzang said in the statement. “I left ABN Amro more than four years ago and am comfortable with the fact that I managed my management responsibilities with integrity and dedication. My status as a suspect does not imply that I will be charged.”
The investigation into ABN started a year after fellow Dutch bank ING Groep NV paid a record 775 million euro fine to settle a similar case.
Although the ING settlement stated that no bank managers would be prosecuted, a Dutch court in December last year ordered a criminal investigation into the role of former chief executive officer Ralph Hamers in the affair after all.
Prosecutors in September 2019 accused ABN Amro of failing to spot accounts involved in money laundering, failing to end relations with suspicious clients and failing to report such transactions to the relevant authorities.
“This settlement marks the end of a painful and disappointing episode for ABN Amro,” chief executive Robert Swaak said.
“The lessons we have learned from this experience drive us in our continued effort as gatekeepers to achieve a safer society and a financial system that meets the highest standards of integrity,” he said.
ABN said it deeply regretted the matter and “that it has fallen short in the fulfillment of its role as gatekeeper aimed at combating money laundering.”
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the