US Treasury fines Bank of America nearly $2 billion over money laundering and sanctions violations

BlockBeats news, October 14: The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced yesterday that it has taken multiple enforcement actions against Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the United States, involving failures in anti-money laundering mechanisms and violations of sanctions regulations.

According to the specific amounts listed in the announcement, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) imposed a $1.2 billion fine, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) imposed a $750 million civil penalty, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) separately reached a $11.6 million settlement with the bank, totaling approximately $1.962 billion.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury stated that Bank of America failed to timely report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions to FinCEN, of which more than $1 billion involved national security and key illicit finance risks, including suspected money laundering networks in Asia, fraud, and potential trade-based money laundering activities. The bank also failed to effectively monitor trillions of dollars in transactions due to deficiencies in its transaction monitoring systems and long delayed the submission of numerous suspicious activity reports.

In addition, Bank of America was involved in 475 suspected violations of multiple sanctions programs, including processing correspondent banking payments through blocked banks and failing to timely update sanctions lists. The related transactions involved sanctions programs related to Russia, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Somalia, narcotics trafficking, and global terrorism. U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent stated that large financial institutions must also comply with anti-money laundering and sanctions regulations, otherwise they will bring risks of illicit fund flows to the entire U.S. financial system.