OCC Fines Bank of America $750M in Record BSA/AML Action
Federal regulators hit Bank of America with a historic $750 million penalty for Bank Secrecy Act violations, the largest such fine in OCC history.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency levied a $750 million civil money penalty against Bank of America, N.A., for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and related anti-money laundering regulations, the agency announced. The fine marks the largest civil money penalty ever imposed in the OCC's history.
Regulators cited the bank's failure to comply with BSA and its implementing regulations, specifically 12 CFR 21.21 and 12 CFR 21.11, which govern anti-money laundering program requirements and suspicious activity reporting obligations for national banks.
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The action underscores federal regulators' intensifying scrutiny of major financial institutions' compliance frameworks, particularly around the detection and reporting of potentially illicit financial flows. BSA/AML deficiencies at institutions of Bank of America's scale carry systemic risk implications that regulators have increasingly treated as a top enforcement priority.
Bank of America, N.A. is a federally chartered national bank supervised by the OCC, which holds authority to impose civil money penalties against institutions found in violation of federal banking laws. The record-setting nature of this penalty signals a potentially higher enforcement threshold for large institutions going forward.
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