These clients included two politically exposed persons, four foreign prominent public officials, and three domestically prominent influential persons.

Under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, banks are required to scrutinise such individuals, along with their immediate family members and close associates, due to the increased risk of money laundering and other financial crimes.

Furthermore, the Prudential Authority found that Absa had been slow in addressing thousands of alerts generated by its automated transaction monitoring system, which is designed to flag unusual or suspicious transactions.

Despite these findings, the regulator confirmed that Absa had cooperated fully with the investigation.

The bank has since implemented the necessary remedial actions to address compliance deficiencies and control weaknesses identified during the review.

--SABC--