The fines total up to the third-largest quantity in Treasury Department history.
WASHINGTON– The U.S. Treasury Department stated Tuesday that it’s enforcing $1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America for supposedly breaking anti-money laundering and sanctions laws.
The fines on America’s second-biggest bank total up to the third-largest in the department’s history.
“When a bank of this size stops working to satisfy its anti-money laundering and sanctions commitments, the repercussions extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the whole U.S. monetary system to substantial illegal financing threats,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated in a declaration. “Today’s actions send out a clear message that even the most significant banks are not above the law.”
Treasury stated Bank of America likewise reached an $11.6 million settlement with the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over “evident offenses of many sanctions programs, consisting of on Iran, Russia, narcotics, and international terrorism.”
In a statement, Treasury said its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) assessed the $1.2 billion penalty for Bank of America’s “failure to alleviate and report top priority nationwide security dangers, consisting of Chinese Money Laundering Networks and illegal financing along the southwest border.”
The charge consists of $750 million that will go to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the biggest fine ever enforced by that federal bank regulative company.
Treasury stated that Bank of America “admits that it willfully violated” the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, which requires banks to help the government detect and prevent money laundering.
“Financial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right,’’ Bank of America said in a statement. “We worked with regulators to reach these penalty resolutions stemming from violations cited in the previously reported 2024 (Comptroller of the Currency) Consent Order and FinCEN’s investigation.
“ We have invested billions of dollars in technology and dedicated thousands of employees to combat financial crime, and our team is far along with and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators.’’
The latest action is the third-largest penalty ever issued by the Treasury Department, behind a roughly $4 billion settlement in 2023 with Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and an approximately $3 billion settlement with Canada-based TD Bank the following year. Both those historic actions happened as part of the Biden administration’s focus on anti-money laundering and efforts to promote compliance with the then-emerging virtual currency industry.
Months later, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, was sentenced to four months in prison over charges that he looking the other way as criminals used his platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.
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Amiri reported from New York.
AP Business Writer Alex Veiga in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
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