Barclays, one of the UK’s largest banks, has been fined £42 million ($56.28) by the country’s financial regulator for what has been described as “poor handling of financial crime risks.”

The fine has been imposed “for separate instances of failings in its financial crime risk management – one relating to WealthTek and one relating to Stunt & Co,” the FCA said in a press release.

According to the watchdog, Barclays “failed to check it had gathered sufficient information to understand the money laundering risk, before opening a client money account for WealthTek. One simple check it could have done was to look at the Financial Services Register before opening the account. Had it done so, it would have seen that WealthTek was not permitted by the FCA to hold client money.”

By not carrying out the above checks, Barclays left open a window of “increased risk of misappropriation of client money or money laundering” especially since “clients went on to deposit £34m ($45.56m) into the account.”

The FCA has confirmed that Barclays will be making “a voluntary payment of £6.3m($8.44m) to WealthTek’s clients who have a shortfall in the money they have been able to reclaim.”

In December last year, the FCA said it had charged John Dance, a principal partner at WealthTek LLP, with nine criminal offences, including multiple counts of fraud and money laundering.

Money laundering

The second and much larger fine of £39.3m ($52.66m) against Barclays has been imposed because of the bank’s relationship with Stunt & Co.

According to the FCA: “Barclays did not gather enough information at the start of the relationship or carry out proper ongoing monitoring. In the space of just over a year, Stunt & Co received £46.8m ($63m) from Fowler Oldfield, a multimillion-pound money laundering operation.”

Once again Barclays has been accused of not taking appropriate action despite “receiving information from law enforcement about suspected money laundering through Fowler Oldfield, and after learning that the police had raided both firms.”

The scandal around Fowler Oldfield, labelled as one of the largest money laundering operations in the UK, also saw NatWest being drawn in and fined £265m ($355.8m) by a London court, as reported by the FT.

Barclays was quoted by the FT saying it “remains deeply committed to the fight against financial crime and fraud” and that the the investigation into Stunt & Co was historical in nature and did not mean the bank had breached any MLRs. It also said it was cooperating with the latest investigation.

The announcement comes a week after the FCA fined one of the country’s fastest growing digital banks, Monzo, £21m ($28.48m) for allowing a number of “high-risk customers” to open accounts with them.

This is the 11th fine the FCA has imposed on a bank in the past four years for financial crime control failings, and the regulator says it continues to supervise firms to make sure they are meeting all requirements.