In a recent press conference, ING CEO Steven van Rijswijk referred to the Payvision money laundering case. He said that the bank is not concerned about a possible settlement. “We have a strong capital position,” Van Rijswijk said. He was open about the mistakes made when the fintech company was bought in 2018. “Obviously, that deal hasn’t been a success,” he said lightly. A few days ago, Payvision founder Rudolf Booker blamed ING for the Payvision collapse.
The good news is that ING seems to be able and willing to compensate the victims of scam brokers who made their deposits through Payvision. Payvision, under the leadership of Rudolf Booker, has welcomed scam broker operators such as Gal Barak or Uwe Lenhoff as customers and has used these scam customers to inflate transaction volumes. Currently, lawsuits have been filed by victims against Payvision under the coordination of the European Fund Recovery Initiative (EFRI) in Austria and in Germany. Up to today settlement talks with the actual board of management of Payvision did not work out. They denied any wrongdoings and tried to revictimize the victims again by denying refunds in case victims (some of them are in their eigthies) can not produce each single vouchers fors credit card transfers made via Payvision. When victims provided credit card numbers used instead of the vouchers, Payvision told them, that this is not acceptable as they can not be sure that the victims are not trying to defraud them (!).
So it is great news for the victims that ING now realizes also that the whole Payvision investment was a mistake, that Booker also victimzed them and it sounds like Steven van Rijswijk is actually prepared and willing to bring justice also to the victims out there. So on Twitter, EFRI’s principal Elfriede Sixt speaks of good news for thousands of victims regarding the ING CEO’s statements:
In 2018, ING acquired Payvision from its founder Rudolf Booker and his co-founders for €350 million. The acquisition was already controversial at the time of the announcement, as it was generally known in the industry that Payvision had a relatively large number of high-risk customers on board. Current ING CEO Steven van Rijswijk was the ING risk manager at the time of the Payvision acquisition in 2018 and is thus responsible for this transaction.
