Business & Markets
U.S. penalties against Bank of America top $1.21 billion after AML findings
The record-breaking actions center on delayed suspicious-activity reports and a compliance program regulators say remained deficient after a 2024 order.
Executive summary
- How the total is structured: FinCEN assessed a $1.2 billion penalty, of which the OCC’s $750 million civil penalty is credited. OFAC separately settled potential civil liability for $11.66 million, bringing Treasury’s combined actions to more than $1.21 billion.[1][2][3][4]
- What regulators found: Treasury says the bank failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions on time, including over $1 billion involving priority national-security and illicit-finance risks. The amount refers to activity regulators deemed suspicious, not a finding that every transaction was criminal.[1][2]
- Required remediation: A consent order requires an outside review of transactions that went undetected and independent assessments of monitoring, customer due diligence, correspondent accounts and data governance.[1][2]
The U.S. Treasury Department announced more than $1.21 billion in coordinated penalties and settlements against Bank of America on Tuesday, citing failures in anti-money-laundering controls and apparent sanctions violations. FinCEN assessed a $1.2 billion penalty, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency imposed a $750 million civil penalty that is credited toward the FinCEN amount. OFAC separately agreed to an $11,662,930 settlement over apparent sanctions violations. The OCC described its penalty as the largest in the agency’s history; Treasury called the combined actions the third-largest penalty in its history.[1][2][3][4][5]
FinCEN said the bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act and did not maintain an anti-money-laundering program that met minimum legal requirements. Treasury said the bank failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions on time; more than $1 billion of that activity involved priority national-security and other illicit-finance risks, including transactions indicative of Chinese money-laundering networks, fraud and potential trade-based money laundering with a substantial southwest-border nexus. These are regulatory descriptions of suspicious activity and risk, not findings that every transaction represented a crime.[1][2]
The OCC said the bank’s transaction-monitoring system failed to properly monitor trillions of dollars in transactions, leading to large numbers of late suspicious-activity reports involving billions of dollars. It also said deficiencies continued more than a year after a December 2024 cease-and-desist order. Regulators cited gaps in escalating possible suspicious activity, staffing and training problems, and a system weakness that allowed potential trade-based money-laundering transactions to go undetected.[3][5][6]
The FinCEN consent order requires Bank of America to hire a third party to look back for suspicious transactions missed because of the identified failures. It also requires independent reviews of suspicious-activity monitoring, customer due diligence, due diligence on foreign correspondent accounts and the data-governance framework supporting the anti-money-laundering program. The reviews are to assess priority risks that include the southwest border, cartels and potential narcotics trafficking, Iran and Russia.[1][2]
OFAC said its $11.66 million settlement resolves the bank’s potential civil liability for 475 apparent violations involving sanctions programs related to Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics and global terrorism. The agency cited payments involving blocked banks, alerts that were not appropriately prioritized, delays in updating screening lists and two business accounts mishandled because of human error. OFAC characterized the violations as non-egregious but said most were not voluntarily self-disclosed.[4][5]
Bank of America said the resolutions stem from violations cited in the 2024 OCC order and FinCEN’s investigation. The bank told the Associated Press it had invested in technology and employees to combat financial crime and was committed to completing required remediation. Axios reported that the bank planned to record a $1.2 billion non-tax-deductible charge in its third-quarter results, due Wednesday.[5][6]