The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has imposed administrative fines amounting to ZAR77.5m ($6.17m) on two banks.
The two banks, China Construction Bank and VBS Mutual Bank, were fined for failing to comply with Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) Act.
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The details of the fines imposed on the two lenders were stated in the 2017 Bank Supervision Department annual report, which was released this week.
SARB penalised the Johannesburg branch of China Construction Bank ZAR75m, of which ZAR20m will be suspended for a period of three years.
VBS Mutual Bank was fined ZAR2.5m, of which ZAR2m suspended for a year.
In the report, SARB stated that these two units were fined for violating the financial laws and regulations. They were found guilty of not verifying the customer details, failing to save customer records as well as lack of supervision and controls to tackle suspicions transactions.
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By GlobalDataIt also directed the two penalised banks to step up efforts to eliminate these deficiencies.
However, the report also stated that the authority found no evidence that these two banks facilitated transactions associated with money laundering or terrorism financing.
The report also stated that the banks are required to increase their controls to adhere with the FIC Act.
