Morocco’s Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP) has agreed to pay €175,215,571 to settle a Belgian criminal investigation into the bank and its French subsidiary over nearly two decades of alleged unauthorized banking operations serving tens of thousands of Belgian clients.

The settlement was approved Monday before the Brussels Criminal Court after lawyers representing BCP, three of its administrators, and Belgium’s federal prosecutors’ office appeared before the bench, Belga News Agency reported. Under the terms of the settlement, Belgian authorities will not seek a criminal conviction against BCP or the three administrators named in the proceedings, according to the report. 

BCP and its French subsidiary, Banque Chaabi du Maroc, also known in Belgium as Chaabi Bank, have been under investigation since 2018 for offenses committed between January 2003 and December 2022, including the unlicensed provision of insurance, banking, and credit services, according to a report by Follow the Money. 

A person familiar with the case told FTM that BCP primarily collected deposits from Belgian clients and transferred them to accounts in Morocco in addition to offering other unauthorized services. The activities involved nearly €1.3 billion and at least 46,433 clients, the person said.

At Monday’s hearing, the presiding judge found that BCP had profited by more than €60 million from the unauthorized operations, while Chaabi Bank had separately generated €64.6 million, FTM reported. Under Belgian banking law, providing such services without a license is a criminal offense punishable by fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s global turnover.

The investigation was conducted under strict secrecy, FTM said. In October 2020, police searched the banks’ branches in Brussels, Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, and Borgerhout, seizing documents and gathering testimony, according to Belga.