Intesa Sanpaolo and its New York branch mismanaged its transaction monitoring system and failed to identify suspicious transactions involving shell companies, the New York State Department of Financial Services said in a statement on Thursday announcing the fine.

The bank also trained employees to handle Iranian transactions so they could not easily be tied to sanctioned entities and deliberately concealed information from bank examiners, the regulator said.

New York's fine against Intesa Sanpaolo follows the regulator's actions earlier this year over anti-money laundering violations by other foreign banks.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Steve Orlosky)