By PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
REVOLUT accounts for approximately 80% of all STRs (suspicious transactions reports) sent to officials in Lithuania.
The country’s Financial Crimes Investigation Service (FNTT) said that the reports mostly relate to potential fraud.
Rolandas Kiškis, head of the FNTT, said: “We receive reports of suspicious transactions. Revolut is the biggest one.
“If we received about 100,000 such reports from financial institutions last year, then Revolut accounts for 80%, which is mainly related to fraud involving private individuals,” he told a parliamentary Budget and Finance Committee.
Revolut, an online bank which is Europe’s most valuable fintech, is based in the UK. However, it mainly serves customers in the European Economic Area (EEA) via its operations in Lithuania.
In a statement to AML Intelligence, Revolut said: “Revolut Bank serves 57 million customers across the European Economic Area (EEA) – tens of times more than any other bank in Lithuania – which is why the volume of suspicious activity reports is proportionally higher.”
Last year, Lithuania’s central bank fined Revolut €3.5 million for AML failings. The regulator said that the company did not always “properly identify suspicious monetary operations or transactions”.
Kiškis said that Revolut now “invests a lot in automation and IT”.
“It profiles and sends everything if it sees the slightest risk,” he said.
Asked if Revolut has now over-corrected and is sending too many low-risk STRs, the company said: “Revolut takes proactive action in the fight against financial crime.
“We utilise highly advanced, AI-driven automated systems for transaction monitoring, and our algorithms detect and respond to potential fraud in real time, reporting it to the authorities.
“Once fraud cases are identified, we take measures to close these accounts and inform law enforcement authorities in Lithuania and across Europe.”
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