A financial regulator has stopped a Bank’s operation temporarily due to suspicions of money laundering breaches through reported wire transfers approved by the bank’s management. By requesting to suspend the operations of the bank, the financial regulator audited the bank and noticed several issues in addition to the wire transfers pertaining to weaknesses in the bank’s policies, procedures, and systems, in which the financial regulator produced a letter indicating all these issues and informed the bank to amend and secure the bank from money laundering breaches within 6 months. The bank did not meet the 6 months deadline, and instead requested extensions. The bank has now had 2 years to amend these issues with no end in sight.
Is the financial regulator right to allow these extensions? To what extent does the financial regulator have to consider in order to decide to suspend the bank’s license in the jurisdiction it is misconducting business?
