(March 12): The UK financial regulator will face calls from Global Witness, an anti-corruption campaign group, to investigate Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered for handling more than US$2 billion of funds allegedly siphoned from 1MDB.

Financial Times reported today that Global Witness will question why the Financial Conduct Authority declined to probe the two banks over the 1MDB scandal even though the banks had been fined by Swiss and Singaporean regulators and investigated by US authorities.

Global Witness wrote in a 26-page report that the 1MDB affair was “a clear failure” by the banks because they “ignored the rules, turned a blind eye, kept profitable clients and continued handling billions of dollars of dirty money despite clear warning signs”, Financial Times reported.

The FCA said in an emailed statement to Financial Times that it was “aware of these matters and has been liaising with our regulatory partners in the jurisdictions in which these activities occurred. We are aware of the action that has been and is being taken by those agencies and others and we are monitoring with interest.”

The Monetary Authority of Singapore fined Coutts, the private banking arm of RBS, S$2.4 million in late 2016 for breaches of anti-money-laundering regulations and failing to meet due diligence requirements for politically exposed persons.

The Swiss banking regulator fined Coutts 6.5 million Swiss francs last year, finding that “those responsible failed to follow up on these clear causes for concern” over a high-risk US$700 million transfer from 1MDB in 2009 and instead chose to “continue with the lucrative business relationships”. RBS sold the international arm of Coutts in 2015.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore also fined StanChart S$5.2 million for “significant lapses in the bank’s customer due diligence measures and controls for ongoing monitoring” after US$1.1 billion that had originated from 1MDB was transferred into an account of a Malaysian businessman in Singapore.

The Singaporean regulator said that while the breaches were serious it found no “pervasive control weaknesses or wilful misconduct” at StanChart, which it noted had proactively taken measures to address the weaknesses, according to Financial Times.