UK's markets watchdog to decide on several anti money-laundering probes

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Financial Conduct Authority said on Monday it expects to take enforcement decisions by year-end on some of its investigations into breaches of rules for stamping out money laundering.

"Financial crime is a high priority for the FCA," it said when asked to comment on the so-called "FinCEN" revelations that several global banks, including HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered from Britain, moved large sums of allegedly illicit funds over two decades.

"At the moment, we have a number of investigations on foot into suspected civil and criminal breaches. These investigations are progressing well and we expect we will be making decisions on some of them by the end of this year."

(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by David Evans)