ING Belgium has agreed to pay a €1.6 million settlement over alleged failures to report suspicious transactions linked to former European Commissioner Didier Reynders, who is implicated in a money laundering case, Follow the Money reported Tuesday. 

The monetary settlement, which totaled the maximum amount currently allowed under Belgium’s criminal code for money laundering offenses, closes criminal proceedings against the bank, which accepted the deal without admitting guilt, according to the report. Reynders is suspected of having laundered ill-gotten gains by depositing illicit funds in his bank account and by later buying electronic lottery tickets with cash and transferring the proceeds to his account.

Belgian police raided Reynders’s homes and questioned him in December 2024, according to the report. Reynders, who served as Belgium’s finance and foreign minister before becoming justice commissioner, was officially charged in November in connection with the case.

The investigation into ING Belgium has centered on the bank’s failure to report a series of related suspicious transactions to Belgium’s Financial Intelligence Processing Unit before December 2023. The transactions involved 245 cash deposits made between 2001 and 2017 worth a combined €836,500, along with 779 e-Lotto transfers between 2017 and 2024 amounting to more than €202,000, together totaling just over €1 million, the news outlet said. 

A separate investigation into ING Belgium was opened last summer following a complaint filed by the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) in April 2025 against the bank for possible complicity in money laundering, The Brussels Times said Tuesday. The NBB had requested an explanation from ING Belgium following press reports of suspected money laundering by Reynders, and the bank’s response revealed indications of a criminal offense in the NBB’s view. 

The investigation was carried out by the Central Service for Combating Corruption under the direction of the Public Prosecutor, The Brussels Times said. 

“With this settlement, we aim to close this chapter from the past and move forward with full focus, in the interest of our clients and the bank,” an ING spokesperson told FTM. “ING today is not the ING of then. Over the years, our approach, governance and control environment have been fundamentally strengthened and further embedded, with clear responsibilities up to the highest levels.”

The prosecutor’s office also confirmed that two former ING employees had been identified and questioned, and that a decision on possible further action against them has not yet been taken, according to Follow the Money.

In February, Reynders’s longtime confidant Jean-Claude Fontinoy was charged with conspiracy and forgery, and Olivier Theunissen, an art dealer who frequently did business with Fontinoy, was charged with conspiracy, FTM said. The outlet noted that the charges are not yet an indictment, but indicate that the investigative judge has determined there are “strong indications of guilt.”