A €3.7 million fine issued to Satabank by the Financial Intellingence Analysis Unit has been reduced to €851,000 by the Appeals Court.

The bank had been fined by the FIAU in March of last year after it was found to be in breach of money laundering laws. The appeals court, while acknowledging that the laws allowed significant discretion to the amount of administrative sanctions, said that fines have to be capped at 10% of the bank’s turnover.

The regulations state that the administrative penalty is capped at €5 million or not more than ten per cent of a business's total annual turnover, based on the latest available approved annual financial statements.

Satabank has been under the control of EY after the Malta Financial Services Authority ordered it to shut down all business activity. The bank’s anti-money laundering procedures had been looked into by both the MFSA and the FIAU over. The MFSA recently announced the appointment of a new controller to oversee the liquidation of the bank.

The police are also looking into multi-million payments that passed through the bank’s channels. All of its 12,000 accounts had been frozen.

Since then, more than 300 reports of suspicious transactions at Satabank worth in excess of €130 million have been flagged by experts. Satabank has since lost its banking license.