Earlier this month, the biggest financial institution of the Netherlands, the ING Groep with more than 52,000 employees in over 40 countries, has admitted that between 2010 and 2016 it helped “criminals” in laundering millions of Euros of dirty money. ING boasted €4.9 billion in profits in 2017.
Coincidentally ING Bank is THE bank that handles the accounts for the Dutch government.

The ING Groep settled the case for a fine of 675 million Euros and 100 million as a reimbursement for the gains, totalling 775 million Euros ($900 million).
CEO Ralph Hamers said the bank "takes full responsibility" for not preventing money laundering by “criminals”.

Two years ago, financial investigators started their investigation after they noticed that many “white-collar” criminals held bank accounts at the ING Bank.
The Dutch prosecutor concluded that clients could use accounts for criminal activities “virtually undisturbed”. ING NL didn’t monitor suspicious transactions.

In one case a women's underwear seller in Curacao laundered €150 million through a bank account at ING: "It should have been clear to the bank that the monetary flows had little to do with the lingerie trade”.

In 2012, in another case, ING paid a penalty of $619 million for facilitating billions of dollars worth of payments through the US banking system for Cuban and Iranian clients in violation with sanctions banning transactions with Cuba, Iran, Myanmar and Sudan: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news...probe-10684244
(archived here: http://archive.is/vzskK)


Lead prosecutor Margreet Frohberg stated:
We had various ongoing criminal investigations and ING bank accounts cropped up repeatedly.
Since 2008, ING was repeatedly warned, but it failed to take sufficient measures to stop the practice.
ING Bank was involved in money laundering for international telecommunications VEON, formerly VimpelCom (using an account of its subsidiary Watertrail), that "[I]transferred bribes worth millions of dollars via its bank accounts with ING to a company owned by the daughter of a former Uzbek president[/I]".
In 2016, VEON settled US charges for $795 million after it paid $114 million in bribes to a government official in Uzbekistan.

According to ING’s CEO Ralph Hamers no individual at the bank is responsible for the failures, or has personally benefited, but it had taken measures against around 10 employees anyway.
The Dutch authorities won’t prosecute a single employee of ING, but instead ING has promised to do better, which involves giving the authorities even more confidential information on their clients: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-in...-idUKKCN1LK0CY
(archived here: http://archive.is/mjY18)

In one of those strange coincidences I have a bank account at ING since 2015 that yesterday sent me a letter that the new policy is that I should do my bank transaction only with the smartphone app...


VEON (Vimpelcom) is part of the Russian Alfa Bank that was communicating with the Spectrum Health of the DeVos family and the Trump Organization in 2016 during the US presidential election: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post6647914


ING’s chief financial officer Koos Timmermans had to resign in the wake of the scandal.
He was forced by former Minister, and director of Royal Dutch Shell Hans Wijers, as chairman of the supervisory board of the ING Groep since 2017: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/0...ering-scandal/


Prosecutors detailed several examples of misused accounts.
In one case a one-man-company in building materials without address in the Netherlands had a business account at ING NL with 15 ATMs linked to it in Surinam. A total of 9,000,000 Euros of criminal money ran through bank accounts at ING NL, but not to pay for any building materials. In reality the terminals in Suriname were used to withdraw cash money.
ING NL did little to investigate the client and the transactions weren’t properly monitored.

In another case, in a little more than a year, 500,000 Euros in cash was deposited in ING bank accounts of 2 connected companies. These were supposedly importing fruit and vegetables from South America as their cover for money laundering.
In total, the ING noticed only one suspicious transaction that was reported much too to the Financial Intelligence Unit, FIU (in Dutch): https://www.om.nl/@103953/ing-betaalt-775/
(archived here: http://archive.is/fukim)


Another interesting company is EY that was the accountant for both Vimpelcom and ING when the money laundering was happening.
EY has denied knowing anything, refused to settle the case and is expected to be taken to court by the Dutch authorities (in Dutch): https://www.accountant.nl/nieuws/201...-verdachte-fd/
(archived here: http://archive.is/0wN76)