Bank of America has been fined $1.2 billion (about 1.6 trillion won) by the U.S. Treasury Department for failing to properly monitor and report suspicious transactions. The transactions at issue reportedly included money flows linked to China and to the U.S. southwestern border region.
The Treasury Department concluded that Bank of America failed to properly report more than $5 billion (about 6.7 trillion won) in suspicious transactions to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and imposed penalties totaling $1.21 billion, CNBC and other foreign media reported on the 13th local time. It is the third-largest penalty the Treasury Department has ever imposed.
More than $1 billion (about 1.338 trillion won) of the suspicious transactions involved matters directly tied to national security and illicit finance risks. The Treasury Department said some of those funds may have been connected to Chinese money laundering networks or to criminal organizations operating along the U.S. southwestern border.
The total includes a $750 million (about 1.0035 trillion won) civil penalty imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the main regulator of large banks, the largest in the agency's history. Bank of America also agreed to $11.6 million (about 15.549 billion won) in civil liability with the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) over 475 alleged violations of various sanctions programs.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the action sends a clear message that no financial institution, however large, is above the law. He said the department also issued a consent order requiring Bank of America to work with outside experts to identify and report suspicious transactions.
Bank of America received a corrective order in December 2024 over deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering program and alleged violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Regulators at the time said the bank had focused on expanding profits while neglecting investment in regulatory compliance. The bank took remedial steps afterward, but authorities still deemed them insufficient. The OCC noted in particular that a lack of skills, expertise and training among responsible staff had made suspicious activity reports late or inaccurate.
Bank of America pushed back, saying it has worked with regulators for years and has continued investing to comply with anti-money-laundering rules. The bank said it has invested billions of dollars in technology and deployed thousands of employees to combat financial crime, and that work to address the issues raised by authorities is well advanced.