The left-wing government of Argentina, through its regulator, has come down hard on a banking group for lax financial crime controls and not replying to questions.

Argentina's Comisión Nacional de Valores, which authorizes Banco Macro's offerings of securities and regulates the public markets in Argentina, has suspended dealing at both Banco Macro and its offshoot, Macro Securities. This is not its only recent intervention: last month, according to a Reuters report, it stopped HSBC's banking affiliate in the country from transferring money abroad after charging it with providing high-net-worth customers with tax-evasion facilities.

The National Securities Commission ordered the 'preventive suspension' of both Macro Securities and Banco Macro, its website saying that this is "due to a non-compliant regime of the public offer, detected during inspections into the prevention of money-laundering." The inspectors were agents of the CNV.

The regulator's site is vague about the shortcomings of the bank and its securities house but it is obvious that they failed to carry out "audits in prevention of money-laundering and financing of terrorism, as established in the law...which prevented a determination of the economic situation [and] the origin of [the customers'] funds."

The regulator found that Banco Macro operated through Macro Securities SA as a client, keeping one or more sub-accounts and/or deposit accounts. The fact that the bank performed operations in a market through a separate agent seems to be illegal under Law No 26.831.

In addition, the regulator complains about "a total lack of transparency with a failure to present, at the time of the inspections, a log of orders that were made." Such a log, it says, should be there to forestall potential conflicts of interest between the portfolio and its clients.