Deutsche Bank’s London branch has been fined £165,000 ($221,084) by the UK sanctions watchdog after breaching Britain’s Russia sanctions regime in 2022.
The UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) said on Tuesday that the bank processed two payments in June and July 2022 worth a combined £635,619 for a Russian entity linked to a sanctioned organization.
According to OFSI, the transactions violated sanctions rules introduced following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A spokesperson for Deutsche Bank said the lender “takes sanctions compliance extremely seriously” and has continued to strengthen its sanctions controls and internal compliance processes.
The German bank voluntarily disclosed the payments to OFSI in September 2022, a move that resulted in a 45% reduction of the original £300,000 penalty.
The case is among the first to be resolved under OFSI’s updated enforcement framework introduced in February 2026, which allows sanctions breaches to be settled through negotiated agreements. Photo by Björn Laczay from Moosburg, Germany, Wikimedia commons.
