Bank Settles with DOJ and Regulators for $3 Billion Over AML Violations

Recently, the DOJ, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), FinCEN, and the Federal Reserve Board coordinated resolutions with a foreign bank and its U.S. national subsidiaries over deficiencies in the bank’s Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and anti-money laundering (AML) programs. The bank pleaded guilty to criminal counts of conspiring to fail to maintain a compliant AML program and failing to file accurate Currency Transaction Reports.  The bank also entered into consent orders with each of the agencies.

According to the DOJ, for nearly a decade, the bank intentionally failed to dedicate the proper resources to the bank’s compliance.  In doing so, the bank “failed to monitor trillions of dollars of transactions . . . which allowed hundreds of millions of dollars from money laundering networks to flow through the bank,” including funds attributable to drug trafficking.  Despite the bank’s internal audit group identifying these points of concern, the bank did little to address them.  The bank failed to implement new tools or meaningfully monitor transactions from high-risk countries. These failures, combined with the bank’s focus on growth and customer experience, rendered the bank convenient for criminals. 

In addition to the monetary penalties imposed, the bank is also subject to comprehensive action plans that include an asset cap to curb the bank’s growth and to ensure attention is given to the development of its compliance programs and remediation of its AML program’s deficiencies.  Among other things, the bank must also engage an independent consultant to perform a SAR look-back analysis to remediate its SAR filings and relocate the parts of its AML compliance program responsible for complying with U.S. law to the United States.