UK Payments Firm Moved Billions for Risky Clients Before FCA Seizure

Euro Exchange Securities UK Ltd., a British payments company, handled at least £2 billion ($2.7 billion) for a small group of risky customers before regulators moved to seize the firm over fears it was facilitating money laundering.

The firm told the Financial Conduct Authority in August that it had made more than 20,000 payments totaling £2.1 billion during the previous 12 months, according to court filings. Almost all of the value of those transactions were on behalf of just 14 clients that Euro Exchange Securities had assessed as posing a “high risk” of money laundering.

The FCA forced Euro Exchange Securities into administration earlier this month, alleging that the firm had “significant risks of financial crime” and presented “unacceptable money-laundering risks to the UK financial system.” That action came six years after the regulator first began monitoring weaknesses in the company’s controls, according to the High Court filings.

Euro Exchange Securities, a so-called electronic-money institution, or EMI, is owned by a businessman called Luis Gasparini. He didn’t respond to requests for comment.

EMIs are FCA-regulated finance firms that can hold client funds, process payments and issue so-called e-money. The regulator has authorized scores of them to operate in the UK in recent years but has since become concerned that the sector is rife with fraud and poor anti-crime controls.

“This is part of a wider effort to clean up parts of the payments sector,” Matthew Long, director of payments and digital assets at the FCA, said in an interview. “We have significantly stepped up our work to move bad actors out of the UK market.”

‘Weaknesses and Inadequacies’

Euro Exchange Securities is part of a broader group of finance businesses with operations in Florida and Italy, according to filings and its website. The group also includes Banex International Bank, a lender based in Puerto Rico. In US court filings, Banex has been listed as Euro Exchange Securities’ largest customer by volume.

The FCA approved Euro Exchange Securities to operate as an EMI in 2018. The watchdog began “sustained supervisory engagement” with the firm just two years later due to its “perceived weaknesses and inadequacies,” according to the UK court filings.

The regulator began a probe of Euro Exchange Securities’ controls in May 2024, demanding to see a selection of the firm’s clients. FCA officials interviewed Gasparini as part of the review and concluded that “he appeared not to demonstrate an understanding of the requirements” of UK money laundering rules.

In April 2025, the FCA sent a feedback letter to Euro Exchange Securities stating that the firm lacked “adequate systems and controls, specifically in relation to the onboarding and ongoing monitoring of clients.” There was a “heightened and ongoing risk” that it could be used to enable financial crime, the watchdog wrote.

Euro Exchange Securities operated like a correspondent bank, an intermediary between other lenders, rather than as a typical payments firm, the documents show. Its 14 biggest clients, which all operated in financial services, were all based in the Americas apart from one in Cambodia, according to the filings.

Redactions made by the FCA in the documents obscure some of the names of the firms that caused the regulator concern, but do reveal some details.

One firm that Euro Exchange Securities provided an account for had a monthly turnover of €500,000 ($575,830) despite being newly incorporated with a single director and minimal share capital.

Its principal business was represented as the “sale of refrigeration, commercial kitchen and ventilation equipment,” while its incorporation documents describe its primary activity as “computer programing.” The company had no website and only a virtual presence in Poland, while its owner was Latvian.

“It was unclear why a Poland-based catering equipment company, with an alleged operational focus on the Baltic nations, would require an e-money account with a UK financial institution,” lawyers for the FCA said in the filings.

Photograph: The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) headquarters; photo credit: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg