Bank of America faces $1.21 billion in penalties

The U.S. Treasury Department announced Tuesday that Bank of America will pay about $1.21 billion in penalties over alleged anti-money-laundering and sanctions violations. The penalties include a $1.2 billion penalty from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a $750 million civil penalty from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and an $11.6 million settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Treasury said the bank failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions in a timely manner. More than $1 billion of that activity involved national-security or other priority risks, the department said. The allegations concern weaknesses in transaction monitoring and sanctions screening, as well as failures to escalate suspicious activity for review. The OCC said its penalty responds to deficiencies in the bank’s anti-money-laundering program that remained after a 2024 enforcement order. The $750 million assessment is the largest civil penalty in the regulator’s history, according to the announcements. Treasury described its FinCEN penalty as the third-largest in that agency’s history.