FCA Opens AML Investigation into Euro Exchange Securities UK
The UK Financial Conduct Authority has opened an investigation into Euro Exchange Securities UK Ltd (EES) over potential offences under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017.
The FCA said on 17 September 2026 that the investigation concerns EES’s conduct between 1 February 2020 and 4 June 2026. The regulator said it appears the firm may have failed to take appropriate steps to identify and assess money-laundering risks across its customers, the countries and geographic areas in which it operated, its services, transactions and delivery channels. The investigation also covers whether those assessments were sufficiently documented and kept up to date.
The FCA is also examining whether EES established and maintained adequate policies, controls and procedures to mitigate and manage the money-laundering risks identified through its risk assessment. Areas identified by the regulator include customer due diligence, ongoing monitoring, internal governance and oversight, resourcing and allocation of responsibilities, record-keeping, and escalation and reporting mechanisms.
The investigation is a further stage in regulatory action taken against EES earlier this year. On 2 June, the FCA required the firm to stop carrying out regulated electronic money and payment services. Two days later, interim managers were appointed by the court after the regulator raised serious concerns about the way the business had operated, including significant financial-crime risks and systemic weaknesses in its financial-crime framework, safeguarding arrangements, ownership and governance.
On 11 June, the High Court confirmed the appointment of Duncan Perring and James Bennett of Teneo Financial Advisory Limited as joint special administrators under the Payment and Electronic Money Institution Insolvency Regulations 2021. The administrators took control of the firm, secured material and froze funds. A First Supervisory Notice subsequently published by the FCA confirmed restrictions on EES’s electronic-money and payment-services activities and imposed requirements relating to its assets and the ringfencing of relevant funds in a designated safeguarding account.
The FCA stressed that the opening of the investigation does not establish that EES committed an offence or breached regulatory requirements. The regulator said it has not yet reached conclusions about what happened or whether any relevant requirements were breached.
