OFAC, FinCEN and OCC Announce Coordinated Enforcement Actions Against Bank of America

OFAC announced an $11,662,930 settlement with Bank of America for 475 apparent violations of sanctions programs targeting Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics, and global terrorism. The failures included processing payments involving blocked banks, inadequate prioritization of screening alerts, delays in updating watchlists, and mishandling accounts associated with blocked persons. OFAC considered the violations non-egregious and largely not voluntarily self-disclosed. In related actions, FinCEN imposed a $1.2 billion penalty for willful Bank Secrecy Act violations involving the bank’s AML program, foreign correspondent account due diligence, and suspicious activity reporting, including failure to timely report over $5 billion in suspicious transactions. FinCEN required a third-party review of historical transactions and independent reviews of compliance controls. The OCC imposed a $750 million penalty for deficient BSA/AML controls and failures to remediate deficiencies identified in its December 2024 order. FinCEN credited the OCC payment against its penalty, leaving $450 million payable under FinCEN’s order. Together with OFAC’s settlement, the penalties total approximately $1.212 billion after that credit.