TD Bank was slapped with a penalty that’ll leave its pockets $3 billion lighter. Combined, the penalties are the largest-ever money-laundering fines a bank in the U.S. has had to pay.
The banking institute pleaded guilty to failing to properly track money laundering by members of drug cartels. As a result, TD Bank’s only way to right its wrong and settle charges is by forking over a lot of money.
There are two separate fines at play. One will see TD Bank pay $1.8 billion to the U.S. Justice Department for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. This rule was put into place solely to prevent money laundering by flagging any transactions over $10,000. TD Bank should have maintained records and reported these suspicious transactions according to the law, which has been in place since 1970.
Separately, TD Bank will send another $1.3 billion to the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as part of its violation. This is the largest enforced fine that’ll be paid out to the organization whose primary operations include money laundering prevention.
The failures stretched from 2018 to 2024. During that time, the bank allowed three separate criminal entities to transfer more than $670 million. One damning accusation according to CNN was for bribes paid out to bank employees of “more than $57,000 worth of gift cards to process more than $470 million in cash deposits from a money laundering network” with the purpose of withholding reporting the illegal dealings.
In a company press release following the ruling, TD Bank said their systems in place “did not deliver” in preventing criminal activity as required per the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance program.
“We have taken full responsibility for the failures of our U.S. AML program and are making the investments, changes and enhancements required to deliver on our commitments,” said Bharat Masrani, Group President and Chief Executive Officer, TD Bank Group. “This is a difficult chapter in our Bank’s history. These failures took place on my watch as CEO and I apologize to all our stakeholders.”
TD Bank has a multi-year plan set in which they will overhaul their AML staff, strengthen its oversight structure and accountability and introduce new standards, processes, and data-driven solutions.
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The post TD Bank’s Record-Breaking Money-Laundering Fine? $3 Billion appeared first on VICE.
