Toronto-based Manulife Financial Corp.’s banking unit faced a $1.15-million fine in 2016 for failing to comply with Canada’s federal anti-money laundering rules, the company confirmed on Monday.
Specifically, Manulife released a statement revealing that Manulife Bank of Canada was the subject of a penalty that the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) imposed last year.
The penalty was significant as it was the first time FINTRAC has penalized a bank since it was given the authority to issue administrative monetary penalties in December 2008; this is also the largest penalty levied to date, totalling $1,154,670.
Although FINTRAC disclosed the penalty last year, it didn’t name the financial services institution facing the penalty.
Read: Canadian bank fined $1.1 million for failing to report suspicious dealing
In a statement issued on Monday, Manulife says it has paid the penalty, which stemmed from administrative lapses that were remedied in 2014. The company says it did not enable or facilitate money laundering.
“We made some administrative errors,” said Donald Guloien, president and CEO of Manulife, who addressed the penalty to members of the media following an event in Toronto on Monday. “They were purely administrative errors. There is no suggestion that any of them resulted in any financial misconduct. We operate the highest ethical standards anywhere in the world, but we are human and subject to making administrative errors.”
Added Guloien: “What happened in this case, is there are two interpretations someone could take about the guidelines. We took an interpretation that was clearly wrong, or certainly not the one that FINTRAC wanted us to hold, and it was repeated a number of times, which led to this large number.”
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