No bank accounts in the UK have been closed over money laundering suspicions an announcement issued Thursday by the Bank of Cyprus (BoC) says.
It is added that the BoC UK is in the process of updating these accounts, with one of the options under discussion the closure of the accounts.
According to the announcement, the BoC UK has been updating accounts, in the framework of established practices and according to UK supervisory authority regulations.
In this context, the bank conducted a regular check of accounts, including accounts belonging to politically exposed persons (PEPs), aiming to update them.
The process showed that a series of bank accounts, belonging to Cypriot and foreign nationals, need to be updated, while some accounts are either inactive for a long time or their credit balance is very low.
One of the options was to shut these accounts down, the announcement says, adding that in these cases, account owners have been notified.
The Group says that none of the accounts in question has been closed down due to suspicions of money laundering practices.
It concludes by saying that a public discussion on the basis of unconfirmed reports is not helping efforts to restore confidence in the banking system.
The issue came up after the Governor of Cyprus’ Central Bank Panikos Demetriades confirmed last Tuesday information, brought up by an MP, saying that the 100 plus bank accounts in BoC UK belonging to PEPs, were closed down.