The fact that ING failed to prevent money laundering is in itself a criminal offense.
Ralph Hamer’s ex-CEO of ING has so far had little trouble with the largest money laundering scandal in history under his leadership. On the contrary. Less than two years after the bank paid the record amount of 775 million euros in a settlement, he became boss of the Swiss bank UBS for a much higher salary.
You could call that strange, because because ING facilitated large illegal flows of money, Hamers was essentially complicit in serious crime. In the banking world, apparently you are still not overcharged. It is more important that the quarterly figures are good and the stock price keeps going up.
The money laundering scandal was the result of a lack of control. The top of the company was warned several times by regulator DNB, but failed to intervene. Nevertheless, the Public Prosecution Service, which reached the settlement with ING, found that there were too few leads to prosecute individuals.
That is partly understandable. It is unlikely that ING employees have actively participated in money laundering. At most, they provoked the crime by making it very easy for criminals. The court, which has looked at the case again, now comes to a different verdict. The fact that ING failed to prevent money laundering is in itself a criminal offense. Hamers therefore still has to answer to the judge.
And that’s good news, as the money laundering scandal exposes a structural weakness in the banking sector that settlements will not fix. Banks tend to cut back on employees who pay attention to whether the bank does business properly. This is very profitable, because the profit increases immediately with such cutbacks and the consequences are only visible in the long term or even not at all.
The only person responsible for this is the CEO. He or she has to make a trade-off between the short-term gains and the long-term risks. To ensure that CEOs are not blinded by the quarterly profit, it is good for them to realize that they can ultimately be held personally responsible for the damage.
The newspaper’s position is expressed in the Volkskrant Commentary. It comes about after a discussion between the commentators and the chief editor.
