Treasury hits Bank of America over AML lapses

The US Treasury Department has imposed a $1.2 billion penalty on Bank of America over anti-money-laundering failures, in one of the department’s largest enforcement actions.

Treasury said the bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act, the 1970 law that requires banks to help detect and report suspected money laundering. According to the department, Bank of America failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions on time, including more than $1 billion tied to national security and other priority financial-crime risks.

The department said the compliance gaps included failures to mitigate and report risks linked to Chinese money-laundering networks and illicit finance along the US southwest border. Separately, the bank agreed to an $11.6 million settlement with the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over apparent violations of multiple sanctions programmes, including measures involving Iran, Russia, narcotics and global terrorism.

Part of the overall penalty is a $750 million fine from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which Treasury described as the largest fine ever imposed by that federal banking regulator. That matters beyond the number. It signals that the case was treated not as a paperwork lapse but as a systemic control failure inside one of the country’s biggest banks.

Bank of America said financial-crime compliance is “serious” and that it had worked with regulators to resolve violations cited in a 2024 consent order and FinCEN’s investigation. The bank said it has invested billions of dollars in technology and assigned thousands of employees to the work, adding that it is progressing on the remedial steps demanded by regulators.

Treasury said the action was the third-largest penalty it has ever issued.