Feb 27 (Reuters) – Switzerland’s financial regulator FINMA said on Friday it would wind down MBaer Merchant Bank AG after Washington threatened to cut the private bank’s access to the U.S. \u200cfinancial system for breaching sanctions against Iran and Russia.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Treasury Department had alleged that \u200cZurich-based MBaer and its employees had facilitated corruption linked to Russian money laundering, as well as money laundering and terrorist financing on behalf \u200bof Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force, which are sanctioned by the United States.<\/p>\n
FINMA said in a statement the bank lacked adequate anti\u2011money\u2011laundering controls, allowing clients to evade asset freezes. A regulatory investigation found that 80% of MBaer’s business relationships carried heightened risks, and 98% of incoming assets came from high\u2011risk clients.<\/p>\n
The bank \u200crepeatedly ignored its compliance department’s recommendations, systematically \u2060failed to investigate the background of its business relationships and transactions, did not always fulfil its anti-money laundering obligations and, in several cases, executed transactions on behalf \u2060of clients who were on sanctions lists, FINMA said.<\/p>\n
“The case is extremely serious,” the regulator said. “Through its conduct and inadequate organisation, (the bank) exposed itself and the Swiss financial centre to disproportionately high risks.”<\/p>\n
FINMA said MBaer had almost 700 clients \u200band \u200bmore than 60 employees, and held client assets totalling \u200b4.9 billion Swiss francs at the end of \u200c2025.<\/p>\n
BOARD OF DIRECTORS RESIGNED<\/p>\n
MBaer said in a statement on Friday it is now in liquidation and represented solely by the appointed liquidators, Daniel Staehelin and Lukas Bopp of law firm Kellerhals Carrard Basel KlG. The board of directors has resigned, the bank added.<\/p>\n
The bank said it had sufficient assets to satisfy all clients and creditors in full. However, after the U.S. intervention and the revocation of its licence, transaction restrictions mean \u200cit can currently make payments only in Swiss francs and \u200bup to 100,000 francs ($130,106.69) per client.<\/p>\n
FINMA said it had started \u200benforcement proceedings against MBaer in 2024. These proceedings ended \u200bthree weeks ago, but due to an MBaer appeal, which the bank withdrew \u200con Friday, FINMA had been unable to implement \u200bthe wind-down plans.<\/p>\n
A raft of \u200binternational sanctions have been imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, and Iran has been heavily sanctioned by the U.S. for years. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that \u200bbanks should be “on notice” that the \u200cTreasury will use the “full force of our authorities” to protect the integrity of the U.S. \u200bfinancial system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb 27 (Reuters) – Switzerland’s financial regulator FINMA said on Friday it would wind down MBaer Merchant Bank…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13877,13835,13047,13383,8073,13123,13382,41,276,17,13876],"class_list":{"0":"post-21043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-financial-regulator","9":"tag-finma","10":"tag-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps","11":"tag-mbaer-merchant-bank-ag","12":"tag-private-bank","13":"tag-russian-money-laundering","14":"tag-sanctions-against-iran","15":"tag-swiss","16":"tag-swiss-francs","17":"tag-switzerland","18":"tag-u-s-treasury-department"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}