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FinTelegram has issued several warnings against the notorious scam and cybercrime facilitator Epayblock, an e-Money Institution regulated by the Bank of Lithuania (BoL). Finally, the regulator announced that it revoked the license of Epayblock due to money laundering issues. The regulator said that it received complaints and information about Epayblock customers potentially using its services for fraud. It initiated the investigation and obtained court permission to apply temporary restrictions on the provision of services to its customers.
According to BoL, Epayblock failed to apply money laundering and terrorist financing prevention procedures properly. High-risk customers were not subject to mandatory additional enhanced due diligence measures. The institution failed to take sufficient measures to identify the objective and nature of business relationships and ascertain the true activities of its customers and did not verify such information using reliable and independent sources.
Epayblock did not monitor customer transactions, its internal control procedures were inadequate, and it failed to ensure the independence of the compliance function from business interests. Having assessed the severity and duration of the breaches, as well as other circumstances, BoL revoked the license of Epayblock. Bravo! Well done!
This is the umpteenth time that BoL has followed FinTelegram’s recommendations and advice. Already in the case of Bruc Bond and International Fintech of the Israelis Eyal Nachum and Tamir Zoltovsky, BoL has withdrawn the license after the many FinTelegram warnings or ensured that the license was withdrawn. There are other companies for license revocation such as GlobalNetInt (GNI), already penalized by the BoL.
