Bank of America fined $1.2bn over claimed sanctions breaches

Bank of America was ordered to pay more than $1.2 billion in fines after the US Treasury Department said the company breached anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, the agency said on Tuesday.

The authority said the fine is the third-largest in its history. Bank of America was also ordered to pay $750 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the largest ever issued by the OCC.

The department's Office of Foreign Assets Control also announced an $11.6 million settlement with Bank of America over 475 “apparent violations” of sanctions against “ Russia , Belarus, Iran , Burma, Somalia, narcotics and global terrorism”.

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Bank of America is the second-largest bank in the US, with more than 70 million clients, and processes $4.5 trillion in payments for customers every year. It enables more than $450 trillion of payments in employee payrolls, supplier payments and corporate credit cards. It also processes an average of $1.9 trillion in wire transfers a day globally for clients.

“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 us financial system to significant illicit finance risks,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“Today’s actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law."

The Treasury Department said Bank of America admitted it willfully breached the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires banks to assist the Treasury in detecting and preventing money laundering.

Bank of America said it has "invested billions of dollars" to tackle financial crime, and that it is "far along" in its remediation efforts with US regulators.

"Financial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right", a Bank of America representative said.

The department said the US bank failed to report to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, with more than $1 billion implicating national security and other risks "indicative of Chinese Money Laundering Networks, fraud, and potential trade-based money laundering with a substantial nexus to the southwest border."

The OCC issued a cease-and-desist order against the bank in 2024 over deficiencies related to its Bank Secrecy Act and compliance programmes.

“The bank’s poor response to its BSA deficiencies is unacceptable,” said Jonathan Gould, Comptroller of the Currency.

Tuesday's fine followed an action from the OCC last week, in which American Express was fined $350 million after its compliance programme allowed $13 billion in suspected money laundering activity to go undetected for more than a decade.

Bank of America is due to report its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

The bank said its third-quarter results will include a $1.2 billion non-tax deductible charge, reducing income by roughly 17 cents per .

"We have already dedicated substantial personnel and resources to our ongoing remediation efforts, and those costs are in the current expense base," a bank representative said.