French banking watchdog flags possible fraud at Leonteq to prosecutors, report says

PARIS (Reuters) -The French banking watchdog ACPR has alerted Paris prosecutors to possible money laundering and financial fraud linked to Swiss-listed Leonteq, the Les Echos newspaper reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, which cited unnamed sources, the watchdog noticed shortcomings in investment services company Leonteq's disclosure of suspicious transactions to authorities, and insufficient checks linked to accounts and transactions of clients in high-risk countries, as determined by global money-laundering task force FATF.

Leonteq said it was not aware that French regulators had reported irregularities linked to its anti-money-laundering or tax processes to prosecutors.

"Leonteq was confronted with certain allegations in 2022 and 2023 concerning products distributed by third parties in the past," the company said in an emailed statement.

It said investigations into the matter it had commissioned found no evidence of intentional misconduct by its employees.

Leonteq said it took any "potential finding by supervisory authorities very seriously".

The regulator ACPR declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

(Reporting by Tassilo HummelEditing by Bernadette Baum and Barbara Lewis)