The central bank says it was identified during an inspection in April-May that Paysera LT failed to properly assess money-laundering and terrorist funding risks and proper adherence to the existing legislation in terms of remote identification of clients, and also failed to ensure reinforced application of client identification measures for clients from the higher risk group.
"Having evaluated the nature of the violations and having taken into account the mitigating circumstances, the Bank of Lithuania issued a fine of 370,000 euros and ordered the company to eliminate the violations," the central bank said.
Paysera LT disagrees with the fine and plans to appeal, stating that 370,000 euros would amount to the company’s three-month net profit this year.
Vytenis Morkunas, CEO at Paysera LT, says financial establishments operate in a high-risk zone targeted by fraudsters, and risk management is "a continuous and never-ending process".
"Therefore, I see the audit results as a good stress-test. It showed former procedural cracks we have already eliminated to prevent financial fraudsters to use them in the future. But we disagree with the proportionality of the fine size as we have already eliminated the violations," Morkunas said.
He also paid attention to the fact that the Bank of Lithuania had no major AML complaints for the company for several years and this year's comments were aimed at improving the quality of procedures and processes. In his words, there have been no factual cases of clients laundering money via the Paysera system.