US fines Bank of America US$1.2 billion, says it violated money laundering, sanctions laws

The US Treasury Department said on Tuesday that it was imposing US$1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America for allegedly violating anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws.

The fines on America’s second-biggest bank amount to the third-largest in the department’s history.

“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 US financial system to significant illicit finance risks,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“Today’s actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law.”

Treasury said Bank of America also reached a US$11.6 million settlement with the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over “apparent violations of numerous sanctions programmes, including on Iran, Russia, narcotics, and global terrorism”.

In a statement, Treasury said its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed the US$1.2 billion penalty for Bank of America’s “failure to mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese Money Laundering Networks and illicit finance along the southwest border”.

The penalty includes US$750 million that will go to the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the largest fine ever imposed by that federal bank regulatory agency.

Treasury said that Bank of America “admits that it wilfully violated” the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, which requires banks to help the government detect and prevent money laundering.

The latest action is the third-largest penalty ever issued by the Treasury Department, behind a roughly US$4 billion settlement in 2023 with Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and an around US$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 looked the other way as criminals used his platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.