Bank of America ordered to pay historic $1.2 billion over alleged sanctions law violations

Bank of America on Tuesday was ordered to pay $1.2 billion to the U.S. Treasury Department after the agency said the company violated anti-money laundering and sanctions laws.

The penalty is the third-largest ever in Treasury history, the agency said. As part of that total, the bank was ordered to pay $750 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the largest-ever fine levied by the OCC.

“Today’s actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institution are not above the law,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

As the second-largest bank in the country, Bank of America has more than 70 million clients and processes about $4.5 trillion in payments for individual customers each year.

Additionally, the bank handles $450 trillion in payments for corporate customers, including payrolls, corporate credit cards and supplier payments.

The Treasury Department said Bank of America “admits that it willfully violated” the Bank Secrecy Act and “failed to maintain” an anti-money laundering program that met minimum requirements under the law. The bank also admitted to having failed to file mandatory Suspicious Activity Reports.

“Bank of America failed to timely report to FinCEN over $5 billion dollars in suspicious transactions, with over $1 billion of this activity implicating national security-related and other priority illicit finance risks, including suspicious transactions indicative of Chinese Money Laundering Networks, fraud, and potential trade-based money laundering with a substantial nexus to the southwest border,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.

FinCEN is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, whose task is to combat money laundering, illicit financial activities and terrorist financing networks around the world.

Bank of America is also settling “its potential civil liability for 475 apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs” with the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees sprawling U.S. sanctions.

The company “processed millions of dollars in payments in apparent violation of sanctions programs targeting Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics, and global terrorism,” Treasury said.

“When a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations, the consequences extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the entire U.S. financial system to significant illicit finance risks,” Bessent said.

Bank of America will report its third-quarter earnings shortly before 7:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday.