Bank of America was fined $1.8 billion, a near-record penalty, for overlooking money laundering and other suspicious customer payments that moved between the United States and countries such as Russia, Belarus and Mexico. The illicit money was allowed through even after securities regulators chided the bank two years earlier over suspected money laundering and told it to be more vigilant.
The Treasury Department and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said in a joint statement that scores of transactions continued to pass through as part of trillions of dollars of activity the bank did not adequately monitor. Some could be explained as "human error," the Treasury said. Others revealed what regulators called systemic gaps in the bank's compliance program, with Bank of America at times failing to make even cursory efforts to investigate suspicious activity.
Regulators said the bank regularly failed to file "suspicious activity reports" with the federal government, ignoring $600 million of transactions involving salvaged vehicles alone. In many cases it took more than six months to file such reports, when it filed them at all. "Today's actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
Bank of America neither admitted nor denied the accusations. Spokeswoman Christa Robinson said the bank had worked with regulators toward a resolution and had invested billions of dollars in technology and thousands of employees to combat financial crime. The penalty comes as the bank prepares to report quarterly earnings, with analysts expecting about $8 billion in profit, and as regulators take a more aggressive stance after a relaxed approach under the Trump administration.
Source: New York Times Business · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing