Company: BCDRF
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000891478-25-000054
Chunk: 149

Company: Banco Santander, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 20-F
Chunk 149
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 the rest for collected taxes originating from our business operations with third parties. The taxes the Group paid directly are part of the cash flow statement and mainly correspond to the income tax paid in 2024 (EUR 5.9 billion at an effective rate of 30.9%). There is usually a mismatch in the taxes we pay directly and those recorded in the financial statements because the payment date set by the laws of each country is often different to the accrual date of the income or the transactions subject to tax. Income tax expense recorded for the year amounts to EUR 5.3 billion, which means an effective rate of 27.8% (see Note 27 to the consolidated report).

| For more details on the Group's tax contribution, see section SN7.7 'Tax contribution'. |

4.2.3Financial crime compliance (FCC) Grupo Santander is firmly committed to the fight against financial crime and compliance with financial crime prevention regulation in every market where we operate. Our Group board-approved and subsidiary-ratified Corporate financial crime compliance (FCC) framework sets out the key principles for preventing financial crime, which underpin these programmes: the anti-money laundering and terrorism financing prevention programme (AML/CFT); the sanctions programme; and, since 2023, the anti-bribery and anti-corruption programme (ABC). This framework is available to all employees and interested third parties. Moreover, we use information channels to raise awareness of the importance of financial crime compliance. We reach out to all our stakeholders through annual training programmes,

communications channels (corporate and subsidiary Intranet sites), awareness campaigns, internal newsletters and best practices so that they can learn about and understand their responsibilities across the Group’s entire operations. The policies that build on this framework (including customer due diligence — CDD — procedures) are designed according to domestic and international financial crime regulation to manage and mitigate the impacts and risks related to FCC and protect the Group’s integrity in all our businesses and operations. We constantly review and update our policies to remain consistent with regulatory amendments and new and ever-changing external threats. Moreover, we have a common oversight methodology that enables us to verify that all our operations comply with this framework under the most demanding, standardized criteria that the centralized and technical FCC units in our markets endorse. These units also play a crucial role in promoting FCC culture and awareness to all Grupo Santander employees. The central and subsidiary-based Financial Crime Prevention units engage in constant dialogue with all the Group’s businesses and functions to identify new risk types, overcome emerging