WASHINGTON — The U.S. Treasury Department announced more than $1.21 billion in penalties against Bank of America on Tuesday over failures to meet anti-money laundering and sanctions requirements.
FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, assessed $1.2 billion. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency imposed a $750 million civil penalty, while the Office of Foreign Assets Control reached an $11.6 million settlement over apparent sanctions violations.
Treasury said the actions included a penalty ranking third in its history and the OCC’s largest assessment on record. The department identified Bank of America as the nation’s second-largest bank.
“Financial institutions are on the front lines of protecting our economic and national security,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
Bessent said compliance failures at a bank that size put the wider U.S. financial system at risk. The findings described in Treasury’s release have not been independently verified.
According to Treasury, Bank of America admitted in the FinCEN resolution that it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act. Its anti-money laundering program did not meet legal requirements, and it failed to conduct required checks on foreign banks’ correspondent accounts and submit suspicious activity reports.
The bank failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions on time, the release said. Over $1 billion involved national security concerns and other risks that authorities had designated as priorities.
That activity showed signs of Chinese money laundering networks, fraud and possible laundering through trade with substantial ties to the southwest border, according to Treasury.
FinCEN found that the bank favored revenue over the resources needed for compliance, the department said. It depended heavily on law enforcement inquiries, requests from other banks and similar interventions to detect suspicious transactions.
Treasury said that reliance shifted much of the bank’s responsibility for proactively detecting and reporting suspicious activity to outsiders. Transactions remained unexamined for extended periods, and the delays made subsequent reports less useful to investigators.
Testing exposed significant weaknesses, but the bank did not take meaningful corrective action, according to the release. Its customer reviews also failed to account for extensive payments from unidentified third parties.
The bank did not adequately respond to mounting warning signs, including possible ties to drug-trafficking proceeds, Treasury said. Those concerns persisted even after compliance employees raised possible fraud and laundering through trade.
The OCC found that the bank’s transaction monitoring failed to adequately cover trillions of dollars in payments, according to Treasury. Large numbers of late reports followed, covering billions of dollars and often showing signs of money laundering.
For years, the bank knew potentially suspicious transactions were not reaching investigators for decisions on whether reports were required, the department said. It failed to correct the problem.
Treasury also described shortcomings in staffing, training and audits. The officer responsible for Bank Secrecy Act compliance and supporting employees lacked sufficient expertise, while key personnel received inadequate instruction on identifying, investigating and reporting suspicious activity.
Those training failures contributed to inaccurate and late reports. Internal auditors missed longstanding problems that examiners later uncovered, according to the release.
A December 2024 cease-and-desist order required Bank of America to repair its compliance program. Treasury said many significant steps remained unfinished, and management continued to minimize the weaknesses.
More than a year after the order, potentially suspicious activity still was not reaching investigators as required, the release said. A systemic monitoring gap also allowed transactions potentially involving laundering through trade to proceed.
The OFAC settlement addressed 475 apparent violations. Treasury said technical and human errors routed correspondent payments through blocked banks, while poorly calibrated alerts allowed designated individuals to pay or withdraw funds.
The bank also delayed watchlist changes after new sanctions designations and mishandled business accounts associated with blocked persons, according to the department.
Those failures involved millions of dollars in payments apparently breaching sanctions concerning Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics and global terrorism.
Treasury said OFAC classified the apparent violations as non-egregious and found that most had not been voluntarily disclosed. The settlement included no discount from the base penalty for corrective measures or cooperation.
FinCEN’s consent order requires the bank to hire a third party to review past transactions and report suspicious activity missed because of its compliance failures.
Independent reviewers must also assess transaction monitoring, customer checks, scrutiny of foreign correspondent accounts and the management of data used for anti-money laundering work.
The reviews will examine risks involving the southwest border, cartels, potential drug trafficking, Iran and Russia. Under the OFAC settlement, the bank also made commitments on training, testing, audits and future communication and cooperation with the agency.
