Central Bank of Kuwait fines nine firms KWD 500,000 under Kuwait's AML law

The Central Bank of Kuwait fined a local bank and eight exchange companies a combined KWD 500,000 under Kuwait's anti-money laundering law, in decisions it published on 25 and 29 October, and gave a foreign bank branch a written warning.

None of the ten entities is named. Every decision was taken by the central bank's board of directors under Article 15 of Law No. 106 of 2013 on combating money laundering and terrorist financing, and each followed an inspection of the entity's compliance with the central bank's instructions on money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The local bank was fined KWD 10,000 for a repeated violation of Article Ninth of the instructions issued on 16 February 2023, its decision says.

The exchange companies were fined the rest. On 25 October the central bank published three decisions, each made up of three financial penalties, totalling KWD 70,000, KWD 70,000 and KWD 40,000 respectively. On 29 October it published five more, of KWD 20,000, KWD 130,000, KWD 60,000, KWD 20,000 and KWD 80,000. The largest, KWD 130,000, cites violations of four articles of the 2023 instructions, one of them repeated, and of a circular on the executive regulations for Security Council resolutions issued under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

Across the eight exchange companies the penalties come to KWD 490,000, an average of KWD 61,250 each, on the Data Desk's addition. Seven of the eight decisions cite Article Tenth of the 2023 instructions, three of them as a repeated or continuing violation. Five of the ten decisions, the warning included, cite circulars on the executive regulations for those Security Council resolutions.

The foreign bank branch received "a written warning penalty and measures to issue an order" after an ad hoc inspection, for a violation of the circular of 26 March 2025 on Resolution No. 8 of 2025, the executive regulations for implementing those Security Council resolutions, the decision says. Each decision ends by saying the central bank seeks to ensure that supervised firms and their employees comply with the laws in force.

Two of the 29 October documents carry other dates in their headers: one is dated 25 October 2026 and one 29 October 2025. The release lists all seven under 29 October.

For boards of Gulf banks and payment firms, the decisions put prices on specific articles of a supervisor's rulebook, as the US and UK sanctions settlements of this year did for screening controls. The central bank's last rate decision, in September, held its discount rate at 3.5 per cent. The penalty totals are Data Desk sums of the figures in the ten decision documents; the central bank publishes no total.