Bank of America ordered to pay historic $1.2 billion fine over alleged sanctions and anti-money laundering violations

Bank of America was ordered Tuesday to pay $1.2 billion to the Treasury Department, which said it violated anti-money laundering and sanctions laws. The penalty is the third largest ever issued in Treasury history, the agency said. As part of that total, the bank was ordered to pay $750 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the largest fine it has ever levied. “Today’s actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. As the second-largest bank in the country, Bank of America has more than 70 million clients and processes about $4.5 trillion in payments for individual customers every year. In addition, the bank handles $450 trillion in payments for corporate customers, including payrolls, corporate credit cards and supplier payments. The Treasury Department said Bank of America “admits that it willfully violated” the Bank Secrecy Act and “failed to maintain” an anti-money laundering program that met minimum requirements under the law. The bank also admitted having failed to file mandatory Suspicious Activity Reports. “Bank of America failed to timely report to FinCEN over $5 billion dollars in suspicious transactions, with over $1 billion of this activity implicating national security-related and other priority illicit finance risks, including suspicious transactions indicative of Chinese Money Laundering Networks, fraud, and potential trade-based money laundering with a substantial nexus to the southwest border,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. FinCEN is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which combats money laundering, illicit financial activities and terrorist financing networks around the world. “Financial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right,” Bank of America said in a statement to NBC News. “We have invested billions of dollars in technology and dedicated thousands of employees to combat financial crime, and our team is far along with and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators.” “We will continue to support federal and local law enforcement across thousands of investigations and report hundreds of thousands of suspicious activity reports each year.” In addition to the FinCEN violations, the Treasury Department said Bank of America is also settling “its potential civil liability for 475 apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs” with the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which oversees sprawling U.S. sanctions. The company “processed millions of dollars in payments in apparent violation of sanctions programs targeting Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics, and global terrorism,” the Treasury Department said. Bessent said, “When a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations, the consequences extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the entire U.S. financial system to significant illicit finance risks.” Bank of America will report its third-quarter earnings shortly before 7 a.m. ET Wednesday.