Lloyds froze accounts after failing to get detailed information about their owners (AFP Photo/DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS) |
London (AFP) - Britain's Lloyds Banking Group has frozen 8,000 customer accounts under a wider crackdown on money-laundering, the lender announced Monday.
LBG took
action late last year after a change to money-laundering rules in Jersey, home
to the lender's international division, the Financial Times had reported.
Lloyds
froze the accounts after failing to obtain details regarding customer
identities despite multiple requests, a company spokesman told AFP.
"In
January 2016, we began to contact certain expatriate banking customers to
ensure we were provided with up-to-date information for our records, where
customer information was missing," the spokesman said.
"This
was required to meet international regulatory standards... Unfortunately, where
a customer has not provided us with this necessary information we have had to
freeze their account until we get the information."
The news
comes amid international moves towards greater tax transparency, including in
UK crown dependencies Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
The three
last week announced plan to publish secret information on company ownership in
the offshore territories by 2023.
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