OMM Redaksiyası
The US Treasury Department has imposed more than $1.21 billion in penalties on “Bank of America” for violations of anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, according to a statement released by the department on Tuesday.
The action includes the third-largest penalty in Treasury history and the largest ever imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the department said.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) acted over the bank’s failure to mitigate and report priority national security risks. The OCC cited deficiencies in the bank’s compliance programme.
FinCEN’s $1.2 billion penalty includes credit for a $750 million civil money penalty imposed by the OCC.
Treasury said the bank had failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions to FinCEN in a timely manner. More than $1 billion of that activity involved national security-related and other priority illicit finance risks, including transactions indicating Chinese money laundering networks, fraud and possible trade-based money laundering linked substantially to the southwest border.
Separately, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reached an $11.6 million settlement with the bank over 475 apparent violations of multiple sanctions programmes, including those involving Iran, Russia, narcotics trafficking and global terrorism.
“Financial institutions are on the front lines of protecting our economic and national security,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
He said failures by a bank of this size to meet anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations could expose the wider US financial system to significant illicit finance risks.
