WASHINGTON — The U.S. Treasury Department announced more than $1.21 billion in penalties against Bank of America for anti-money-laundering and sanctions failures, the third-largest penalty in Treasury history and the largest ever by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Treasury said Tuesday.
FinCEN assessed a $1.2 billion civil penalty — crediting a record $750 million OCC fine — after finding the nation’s second-largest bank failed to timely report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, including more than $1 billion tied to national-security risks such as Chinese money-laundering networks and trade-based laundering with a southwest-border nexus, the Treasury Department said. OFAC separately settled 475 apparent sanctions violations for $11.6 million.
“When a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations, the consequences extend far beyond its own walls,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. Regulators said the bank overly relied on law-enforcement and peer-bank tips instead of its own monitoring, effectively outsourcing proactive detection.
Bank of America admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain a compliant AML program, conduct foreign correspondent due diligence and file suspicious activity reports. In a statement to the BBC it said third-quarter results would include a non-tax-deductible $1.2 billion charge, about 17 cents a share, and that remediation work is underway. The consent order requires a lookback and independent reviews of monitoring, customer due diligence and data governance.
Sources: U.S. Department of the Treasury, BBC News, The Associated Press
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