Tighter controls net Bank of Portugal €1.2 million in fines

The Bank of Portugal’s get tough policy on financial institutions who infringe regulations has netted the institution €1.2 million.

For example, in 2015 and 2016 the BdP fined state-owned Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) €80,000 for various payment operations made without the consent of clients. In four of the cases the bank did not immediately refund the non-authorised transaction amounts.
All these infringements led to the bank having to stump up a fine of €80,000. CGD did not appeal against the BdP decision.
In another infraction, an electronic payment platform Eupago was slapped with a €11,000 fine, half of which was suspended for a period of two years.
From the various infractions detected by the Portuguese central bank in recent years, around 40 cases ended up with fines, including the largest national banks such as CGDm BCP, Santander Totta and BPI as well as fintechs like Easypay whose cases are now closed but was fined by the BdP.
According to back-of-the-envelope calculations made by business online news site Eco, the €1.154 million amount does not include fines applied to Montepio, Tomás Correia and other former directors of that mutual bank.
The Bank of Portugal has accused Tomás Correia and other Montepio board directors of breaking Montepio’s internal management control regulations which the bank says it will appeal against.
The largest fine was slapped on Banif and its former directors because of infringements between 2010 and 2012.
Currently being wound up, the bank failed to meet credit limits which state that loans must not exceed 10% of the institutions own funds. The result was a €1 million fine suspended for four years. All told, other fines levelled at Banif and its directors amounted to €680,000, although a partial suspension of these fines resulted in the fines being reduced to €340,000.