Bank of America fined $1.2 billion for anti-money-laundering and sanctions breaches

The U.S. Treasury Department announced Tuesday that it is levying a $1.2 billion fine against Bank of America for alleged failures to meet anti-money-laundering and sanctions obligations. The penalty, the third-largest in Treasury’s history, includes $750 million earmarked for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, marking the largest fine ever imposed by that regulator.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the bank’s shortcomings “expose the entire U.S. financial system to significant illicit finance risks” and emphasized that “even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law.”

In addition, the Treasury reported that Bank of America reached an $11.6 million settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control over “apparent violations of numerous sanctions programs, including on Iran, Russia, narcotics, and global terrorism.”

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed the $1.2 billion penalty for the bank’s “failure to mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese money-laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border.”

Bank of America acknowledged the violations, stating that it “admits that it willfully violated” the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act. The bank said it has invested billions of dollars in technology and deployed thousands of staff to address financial-crime compliance and will continue working with regulators to resolve the issues identified in prior consent orders and investigations.

“Financial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right,” the bank said in a statement. The action follows earlier large penalties, including a roughly $4 billion settlement with cryptocurrency exchange Binance in 2023 and an approximately $3 billion settlement with TD Bank the following year.