On 5 May 2022, FinTelegram reported a regulatory audit of Verified Payments UAB d/b/a Verifo (www.verifo.com). The entity is regulated by the Bank of Lithuania, which scheduled an audit from May 6 to June 23, 2022, to assess the institution’s compliance with applicable anti-money laundering and terrorist financing requirements. FinTelegram has received a copy of the regulator’s letter and additional insider information. Verifo sent a compliant to FinTelegram, which we publish in part below as a courtesy:
[start of Verifo statement]
The Company is a licensed e-money institution which has the right to execute activities related to issuance of e-money and provision of payment services around the European Union. The Company is supervised by Bank of Lithuania under the Electronic Money Regulations.
Firstly, the Bank of Lithuania on 1th February, 2022 has announced the public schedule for planned inspections of financial market participants and expected thematic analyzes. It shall be noted that the Company is included in the list of planned inspections together with other 26 financial market participants. In addition to this, the Bank of Lithuania will select up to 50 financial market participants for thematic analysis. The planned inspection of the Bank of Lithuania is their annual function provided by the Lithuanian Law on the Bank of Lithuania.
Secondly, the Company’s license is in no way subject to inspection by the supervisory authority. The Bank of Lithuania is going to inspect individual questions of prevention of ML/TF, the same that it will do with dozen other EMIs included in the inspection plan. Thus, FinTelegram News is using misleading illustration to illustrate its Article that the license of the Company is under investigation. The license of the Company is neither suspended or limited, nor investigated, there are no limitations to license of the Company whatsoever.
Thirdly, FinTelegram News incorrectly and irresponsibly positions the following information in the Article: “Insiders alerted us a few weeks ago that there were alleged problems with Verified Payments paying attention to money laundering and supporting questionable transactions”. However, there were no complaints in regard to the Company where the Bank of Lithuania has issued any decision.
[end of Verifo statement]
FinTelegram Remarks
Regarding Verifo‘s statement, we may note that we never claimed that the license would be the subject of the audit. Moreover, we have not stated that the Verifo license would be “suspended or limited.” However, the insiders have informed that there are complaints about Verifo. We have explicitly stated that we cannot confirm these complaints and that it is the task of the Bank of Lithuania to investigate this.
