In February 2017, the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei Dati Personali) fined five companies over 11 million euros for the unlawful processing of personal data.
The companies, which operate in the money transfer field, unlawfully processed the personal data of over 2 millions people. To avoid money laundering legislation, the companies would use the data of completely unaware customers to send money in China.
Since the data was processed without the data subjects’ consent, the Italian DPA issued five remarkable sanctions, respectively of EUR 5,880,000 to the multinational company and EUR 1,590,000, EUR 1,430,000, EUR 1,260,000 and EUR 850,000 for the other companies involved, for a total of over 11 million euros.
The Italian DPA’s press release is available (in Italian) at http://www.garanteprivacy.it…
Originally published on Technethics on May 2017