Bank of Scotland fined £160,000 by UK sanctions watchdog for opening a bank account and processing payments for Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, a former Russian governor of Sevastopol and sanctioned ally of Vladimir Putin. Ovsiannikov used a variant spelling of his name on his UK passport to bypass the bank’s sanctions screening. He made 24 payments totalling £77,383 in February 2023. The account was flagged only after the bank identified him as a designated person in a politically exposed person check. The fine was cut by 50 per cent after the bank voluntarily disclosed the breach a month after the payments. Ovsiannikov had been earlier prosecuted for circumventing UK sanctions. The case highlights the challenges of enforcing sanctions amid changing spelling and passport details.

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