Barclays pays $145M fine after ignoring money-laundering rules for rich clients

Barclays PLC has been fined 72 million ($145 million Cdn) by British regulators for failing to implement anti money-laundering controls in a series of secretive deals with rich clients.

The U.K.-based bank created a product between 2011 and 2012 to hold 1.88 billion ($3.78 billion) for rich clients, an opportunity one Barclays manager called the "deal of a century."

The deal included confidentiality for the clients involved and was so secret Barclays kept documents related to it in a special safe that few employees knew about and didn't keep a computer record.

The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority said it did not discover any financial crime, but said Barclays "failed to minimize risk" around clients who were high net worth "politically exposed" people.

"Barclays applied a lower level of due diligence than its policies required for other business relationships of a lower risk profile," the FCA said.

The regulator said the fine was structured to recoup more than the 52.3 million ($105 million) Barclays made on the deal.

However critics have questions about whether Barclays staff were disciplined and why they were not named.

"While we welcome the regulatory action and the fact that the company has co-operated with the investigation, for a failure on this scale we would expect to see action taken against key individuals, which may include prosecution or being de-barred from working in financial services," said Robert Barrington, the executive director of Transparency International UK.

Barclays has paid 500 million ($1 billion) in fines since 2009 for oversights by its wealth management arm.