Swiss regulator still probing UBS, three others over 1MDB role

Bloomberg

Switzerland’s financial regulator said it’s still probing UBS Group AG and three other private banks in relation to alleged corruption and money laundering at the Malaysian government fund known as 1MDB. “There are still a handful of cases related to 1MDB that have not been concluded,” Mark Branson, chief executive officer of the regulator Finma, told reporters in Bern on Tuesday. He later added that four banks are still under scrutiny.
Four cases remain unresolved, including an enforcement proceeding against UBS, the largest Swiss bank, according to Vinzenz Mathys, a spokesman for Finma. The regulator hasn’t named the other three banks.
Regulators and prosecutors in the US, Singapore and other jurisdictions have investigated how banks were used to funnel money from alleged corruption at 1Malaysia Development Bhd., which has denied wrongdoing. Finma, a Bern-based watchdog established in 2007 to oversee banks, insurers and other financial firms, has already sanctioned three of the nation’s lenders over their roles in the affair.
Finma confiscated profits from Coutts & Co. in Zurich after the international private banking unit formerly owned by Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc allowed $2.4 billion worth of assets related to the Malaysian development fund to flow though its
accounts in Switzerland, the regulator said in February.