ING Belgium has agreed to pay a €1.6 million settlement over alleged failures to report suspicious transactions linked to former European Commissioner Didier Reynders, who is implicated in a money laundering case.
Belgian police raided Reynders’s homes and questioned him in December 2024, as first reported by Follow the Money and Le Soir. ING Belgium was itself under investigation for failing to report suspicious deposits linked to Reynders’s accounts, Le Soir reported a month later.
In November last year, Reynders was officially charged. He is suspected of having laundered money by depositing large amounts of cash on his bank account, as well as by later buying electronic lottery tickets with cash money and transferring the proceeds to his bank account.
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For years, Reynders served as Belgium’s finance and foreign minister before becoming justice commissioner.
The investigation focused on why ING Belgium had failed to report a long series of suspicious transactions to Belgium’s Financial Intelligence Processing Unit before December 2023, according to a press release by prosecutors published on Thursday, despite anti-money laundering obligations requiring banks to flag unusual activity.
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“Failing to report money laundering allows those activities to continue over time and assists perpetrators in committing the offence,” the prosecutor said. “Money laundering can only be seriously and effectively combated provided that banking institutions, without any privilege and regardless of the client’s status, comply with their anti-money laundering obligations.”
The transactions involved 245 cash deposits made between 2001 and 2017, worth a combined €836,500, as well as 779 e-Lotto transfers between 2017 and 2024 amounting to more than €202,000. Together, the transactions totalled just over €1 million, according to the press release.
The prosecutor proposed a financial settlement of €1.6 million – the maximum amount currently allowed under Belgium’s criminal code for money laundering offences. ING Belgium accepted the settlement while stating that doing so did not amount to an admission of guilt. The payment extinguishes criminal proceedings against the bank.
“With this settlement we aim to close this chapter from the past and move forward with full focus, in the interest of our clients and the bank,” an ING spokesperson told FTM. “ING today is not the ING of then. Over the years, our approach, governance and control environment have been fundamentally strengthened and further embedded, with clear responsibilities up to the highest levels.”
The prosecutor’s office also confirmed that two former ING employees had been identified and questioned. A decision on possible further action against them has not yet been taken.
The case marks another major chapter in the widening Reynders affair, which has drawn intense scrutiny in Belgium over questions surrounding unexplained financial flows linked to the veteran liberal politician. Banks have a legal obligation to apply anti-money laundering rules “without privilege and regardless of the status of the client”, the prosecutor said.
The settlement also highlights growing pressure on European banks over anti-money laundering compliance failures. In recent years, regulators and prosecutors across Europe have imposed multibillion-euro penalties on banks accused of overlooking suspicious transactions, particularly in cases involving politically exposed clients or cross-border financial flows.
In February, Reynders’s longtime confidant Jean-Claude Fontinoy was charged with conspiracy and forgery. Olivier Theunissen, an art dealer who frequently did business with Fontinoy, was charged with conspiracy. The charges are not an indictment yet, but mean that the investigative judge determined that there were “strong indications of guilt”.