BANK OF AMERICA ORDER TO PAY $1.2 BILLION FOR FAILING TO REPORT MONEY LAUNDERING
Written by Michael Thervil
[BANK OF AMERICA MONEY LAUNDERING] Today top banking institution Bank of America was fined $1.2 billion for failing to report money laundering and other forms of criminal activity to FinCEN in the excess of $5 billion. The reported fine rendered onto Bank of America has been considered to be the third largest fine rendered against a financial institution in history. Economic Analysts appear to be split on this situation with some Economic Analysts taking the position that Bank of America may have purposely turned a blind eye to the criminal transactions, while others are taking the position that they simply “Failed to detect the criminal activity in time”.
A spokesperson for the Bank of America stated to the Press that “Financial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right. 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."
Some seem to make the argument that because Bank of America has been seeing somewhat of a decline in shares and also a reduction in their quarterly net income, this may have served as a potential motive for why Bank of America may have decided to turn blind eye to the potential criminal activity within their banking institution. Adding additional injury to the verdict rendered by the courts, this would not be the first time that the Bank of America has been found guilty of failing to present criminal activity within its institution. In 2024 the office of the comptroller of the currency filed a motion that resulted in a $750 million judgement against Bank of America due to consistently failing to put in place or enforce existing administrative processes that would aid in curbing money-laundering within its institution.
In 2022, Bank of America was fined by both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for improperly freezing the thousands of prepaid cards which held the funds for jobless benefits of it consumers due to a known faulty fraud detection issue. American banking regulators called the Bank of America handling of the situation “botched”. In 2006 Bank of America was again ordered by the office of foreign assets (OFAC)control to pay $11.6 million in fines for processing over 400 transactions that violated the U.S. sanctions applied towards Russia and Iran.
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