ABN Amro did not have proper checks on potential fraud and money laundering in place until well into 2019, the Financieele Dagblad said on Monday.

This is around a year after ING reached an out of court settlement with the public prosecution department over its regulatory failures, which should have alerted executives to the risks, the paper said.

The Dutch central bank had been emphasising the importance of extra checks since 2016

The public prosecution department and finance ministry investors have been looking into money laundering and potential terrorism financing at ABN Amro since 2019 and last week expanded the probe to include debt laundering.

A number of cases are central to the investigation, including one involving a worker at the FloraHolland flower auction. ‘These cases were all noted and reported by the tax office or an online payment service, not the bank itself,’ the FD pointed out.

Bank sources told the paper that its officials had always worked hard to check files, but that there was no structural bank-wide approach. This is partly due to the number of changes in the bank at a senior level between 2016 and 2018, the sources said.