February 19
19:44
2016
The US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said in a statement issued Friday in the tiny European principality of Andorra it had lifted money laundering accusations against an Andorran private bank. FinCEN said last year that Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA), the fourth largest bank in the principality nestling in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, took bribes over several years to channel profits facilitate laundering of cash from Russian and Chinese organised crime as well as Venezuela's state oil firm PDVSA. The charge led Andorran regulators to take control of the bank, whose CEO Joan Pau Miquel Prats was arrested and a "bad bank " set up to separate toxic from non-toxic assets.