FIAU cannot name sanctioned company XNT until appeal is resolved

The company formerly known as Exante has successfully battled Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU), to have the publication of its name and €244,679 fine removed from its website until its challenge against the fine is resolved.

XNT Ltd had won a first hurdle in court back in 2022 after being fined by the FIAU over various anti-money laundering shortcomings and for failing to carry out enhanced due diligence on its clients’ business.

XNT, through its lawyer José Herrera, the former Labour minister, successfully obtained that first court decision to have the fine removed from the FIAU’s website – which original link was removed by the FIAU.

The government’s anti-money laundering watchdog has now lost a court appeal on that decision, with the Court upholding the first court’s decision on the interim order to remove the notice of the fine. The FIAU fine is being contested within the Financial Services Tribunal.

XNT is owned by Lartemisis Holdings, and its directors are Alexnadros Constantinou, Alexey Kirienko, Anatoly Knyazev, and Paulo Machado Fernandes.

XNT was fined by the FIAU over its lax measures to combat financial crime. In one customer file, incoming payments amounting to approximately €40 million over a period of three years had been approved.

In total, four incoming transactions were reviewed with one of the transactions exceeding US$24 million. The company said the funds were transferred from an account in the customer’s name to another of his.

However, when supporting documentation in relation to these transactions was requested, the company only provided a confirmation letter (for some of the transactions) that the customer holds an account and a business relationship with another bank.

No further documentation was provided to substantiate the inbound transactions and to establish how the funds were generated.

The company failed to adequately inquire and establish the source of funds and how these were accumulated.

In 2015, Exante was implicated in a huge United States insider trading racket linking company officials to $100 million in profits allegedly derived from an international hacking ring that stole data from news wires to trade ahead of the market. The charges against the company were later dismissed.