It has been a rough week for several major banks around the world. Wells Fargo & Co. suffered a triple whammy of problems this week, while French prosecutors were investigating Paris-based Societe Generale over possible money laundering, and Spain's Banco Sabadell and CaixaBank were caught up in the political turmoil in their home region of Catalonia.

First Wells Fargo's CEO, Timothy Sloan, was grilled Tuesday in Washington, D.C., by a U.S. Senate banking panel over past scandals. Some senators also berated him for using forced arbitration to quietly settle disputes with customers rather than allowing them to sue the bank, which would make the disputes public.

The state of California did more than talk. Gov. Jerry Brown Wednesday signed into law a measure that prohibits financial firms from forcing customers into arbitration over disputes involving bank fraud. The law was inspired by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo's misdeeds.

The week's third strike against Wells Fargo came Thursday when the bank agreed to refund millions of dollars in fees that were wrongly assessed to mortgage borrowers from 2013 through February 2017.

A company statement acknowledged that borrowers were charged millions of dollars in rate-lock extension fees “in cases where the company was primarily responsible for the delays that made the extensions necessary.” The bank said in August that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was investigating the rate-lock fee matter.

Meanwhile in France, the New York Times reported this week that French prosecutors were investigating Societe Generale for possible anti-money laundering violations. The Times said investigators are looking at the role SocGen played in the transfer of $2 million that allegedly was paid as a bribe to ensure Rio de Janeiro won the right to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

The office of New York-based Laura Schisgall, SocGen general counsel/America, forwarded a statement from the bank, saying SocGen doesn't comment on individual cases.

The statement said, “Societe Generale is subject to comprehensive AML and KYC [know your customer] regulations and complies with industry standards. The [SocGen] Group considers the fight against corruption and money laundering as a top priority.”

In neighboring Spain, it's politics and not fraud that's threatening banks. The newspaper El Mundo reported that the directors of Banco Sabadell, the country's fifth largest bank, voted Thursday afternoon to move its headquarters from Catalonia to Alicante.

The Catalan region has been racked with violence since separatists won last weekend's vote to declare independence from Spain. The Spanish government has said the vote was suspect.

The newspaper said Spain's leading retail bank, CaixaBank, also is considering a move. It is looking at going to the Balearic Islands from its base in Barcelona, which is the capital of Catalonia and the site of much of the violence.

Both banks have suffered recent drops in stock value blamed on the independence movement.