U.S. Treasury fines Bank of America $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 penalty against Bank of America for alleged violations of anti-money-laundering and sanctions regulations. The fine, the third-largest in the department’s history, includes a $750 million payment to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, marking the regulator’s biggest ever sanction.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the bank’s shortcomings “extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the entire U.S. financial system to significant illicit finance risks.” He added that the action “sends a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law.”

In addition to the Treasury penalty, 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.”

FinCEN, the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, assessed the 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 that it “willfully violated” the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, which requires banks to assist the government in detecting and preventing money laundering. In a statement, the bank said it has invested billions of dollars in technology and deployed thousands of employees to improve its financial-crime compliance program and is working with regulators to resolve the penalties.

The Treasury’s action follows earlier large settlements, including a roughly $4 billion settlement with cryptocurrency exchange Binance in 2023 and an approximately $3 billion settlement with TD Bank in 2024, both pursued under the previous administration’s anti-money-laundering initiatives.