Bank of America Fined $1.2bn For Cash Laundering Failures
The US Treasury Department has fined Bank of America $1.2bn (£910m) for failing to identify suspected money laundering and other criminal behaviour.
The Treasury said the banking behemoth failed to report more than $5bn of suspicious conduct to the authorities, including $1bn that posed a national security risk and involved illicit money.
Those failings included not flagging transactions that could have implicated Chinese money laundering networks or trade-based laundering “with a substantial nexus to the southwest border, Treasury said. Our team is well underway and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators,” Bank of America told the BBC.
The news came less than 24 hours before Bank of America planned to report its quarterly earnings Wednesday morning. “In an e-mailed statement, the bank said its third-quarter results will reflect a $1.2 billion non-tax-deductible charge that will cut net income by about 17 cents per share. We have already incurred significant people and resources to our ongoing remediation efforts, and those costs are within our current expense base, it said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the fine, saying, When a bank this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations, the impact is felt well beyond the walls of the bank itself and exposes the entire US financial system to serious illicit finance risks.” The fine is the third largest imposed by the department.
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