US hits Bank of America with $1.2 billion fine, saying it violated money
laundering, sanctions laws
[October 14, 2026] By
PAUL WISEMAN and FARNOUSH AMIRI
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Treasury Department said Tuesday that it’s
imposing $1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America for allegedly
violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws.
The fines on America’s second-biggest bank amount to the third-largest
in the department’s history.
“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 U.S. 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.”
Treasury said Bank of America also reached an $11.6 million settlement
with the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over “apparent
violations of numerous sanctions programs, including on Iran, Russia,
narcotics, and global terrorism."
In a statement, Treasury said its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)
assessed the $1.2 billion penalty for Bank of America's "failure to
mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese
Money Laundering Networks and illicit finance along the southwest
border.''
The penalty includes $750 million that will go to the U.S. Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency, the largest fine ever imposed by that
federal bank regulatory agency.
Treasury said that Bank of America "admits that it willfully violated''
the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, which requires banks to help the government
detect and prevent money laundering.
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 “Financial crime compliance is
serious, and we are responsible for getting it right,’’ Bank of
America said in a statement. “We worked with regulators to reach
these penalty resolutions stemming from violations cited in the
previously reported 2024 (Comptroller of the Currency) Consent Order
and FinCEN’s investigation.
“ 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.’’
The latest action is the third-largest penalty ever issued by the
Treasury Department, behind a roughly $4 billion settlement in 2023
with Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and an
approximately $3 billion settlement with Canada-based TD Bank the
following year. Both those historic actions happened as part of the
Biden administration’s focus on anti-money laundering and efforts to
promote compliance with the then-emerging virtual currency industry.
Months later, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, was sentenced
to four months in prison over charges that he looking the other way
as criminals used his platform to move money connected to child sex
abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.
___
Amiri reported from New York.
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