{"id":372398,"date":"2026-10-13T22:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T22:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/372398\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T22:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T22:44:09","slug":"bank-of-america-hit-with-1-2b-fine-for-money-laundering-sanctions-violations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/372398\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank of America hit with $1.2B fine for money laundering, sanctions violations"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Treasury Department said Tuesday that it\u2019s imposing $1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America<\/a> for allegedly violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws.<\/p>\n

The fines on America\u2019s second-biggest bank amount to the third-largest in the department\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen 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,\u201d Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. \u201cToday\u2019s actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fines on America\u2019s second-biggest bank amount to the third-largest in the department\u2019s history. REUTERS<\/p>\n

Treasury said Bank of America also reached an $11.6 million settlement with the department\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control over \u201capparent violations of numerous sanctions programs, including on Iran, Russia, narcotics, and global terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, Treasury said its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed the $1.2 billion penalty for Bank of America\u2019s \u201cfailure to mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese Money Laundering Networks and illicit finance along the southwest border.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The penalty includes $750 million that will go to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the largest fine ever imposed by that federal bank regulatory agency.<\/p>\n

Treasury said that Bank of America \u201cadmits that it willfully violated\u2019\u2019 the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, which requires banks to help the government detect and prevent money laundering.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law,\u201d Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cFinancial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right,\u2019\u2019 Bank of America said in a statement. \u201cWe worked with regulators to reach these penalty resolutions stemming from violations cited in the previously reported 2024 (Comptroller of the Currency) Consent Order and FinCEN\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201c We have invested billions of dollars in technology and dedicated thousands of employees to combat financial crime, and our team is far along with and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The latest action is the third-largest penalty ever issued by the Treasury Department, behind a roughly $4 billion settlement<\/a> in 2023 with Binance, the world\u2019s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and an approximately $3 billion settlement<\/a> with Canada-based TD Bank the following year. <\/p>\n

\u201cFinancial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right,\u2019\u2019 Bank of America said in a statement. CEO Brian Moynihan, above. AP<\/p>\n

Both those historic actions happened as part of the Biden administration\u2019s focus on anti-money laundering and efforts to promote compliance with the then-emerging virtual currency industry.<\/p>\n

Months later, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, was sentenced to four months in prison<\/a> over charges that he looking the other way as criminals used his platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US Treasury Department said Tuesday that it\u2019s imposing $1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13178,1534,288,7003,15780,9,11,10,87,3617,18543,3417],"class_list":["post-372398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-bank-of-america","tag-banks","tag-business","tag-fines","tag-money-laundering","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-sanctions","tag-treasury-department","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}