Money laundering

A report released this week by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., shines a light on what is required of banks when high-net-worth clients engage in suspicious activity.

The second-largest U.S. bank provided an update to investors about the consent order issued by the OCC in 2024, saying a resolution may include monetary penalties.

The Treasury's financial crime prevention arm said the Swiss firm's U.S. brokerage wing largely ignored a 2018 consent order to clean up its anti-money-laundering processes, leading to the historic settlement announced early in August.

Fincen's Andrea Gacki will join Citi as global head of sanctions, BBVA promoted Gonzalo Rodríguez to chief financial officer, HDFC Bank penalized three senior officials for their role in a controversial deposit arrangement, and more in this week's banking news roundup.

In a new paradigm of anti-money-laundering compliance, success increasingly depends not on obtaining information faster, but on recognizing when machine-generated intelligence should not be trusted.

Two former mid-level employees at the Toronto-based bank received U.S. prison sentences for their roles in funneling nearly half a billion dollars through TD accounts.

One of Sweden's biggest banks agreed to the penalty to resolve a multiyear investigation into its compliance failures. The New York State Department of Financial Services said Swedbank intentionally withheld information it was required to turn over.

The proposal calls for banks to make their compliance programs "risk-based" and pledges to emphasize "systemic" flaws with anti-money-laundering programs rather than "isolated" shortcomings.

As a subsidiary of Bank of America, Merrill uses a BofA software program to monitor and report suspicious activity. For years, the Securities and Exchange Commission says, that program fell short.

The Omaha bank says AI agents halve the time required to research fraud, sanctions violations and money-laundering alerts.

The clarification spells out what banks can share to stop scams. The Bank Policy Institute welcomed it but wants Congress to write the protection into law.

Cheungkin Lam fed customers' account details to a crew that drained their balances, including $417,300 from one account that TD had to repay.

Belgian prosecutors say they're finalizing charges over €500 million in suspect transactions. Wise calls the case, like its U.S. run-ins, a routine matter.

A proposal from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would require the agency to notify Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network 30 days prior to major anti-money laundering actions against stablecoin issuers. The rule would also allow issuers to directly share normally confidential information with Fincen during the enforcement process.

An automated alert system auto-closed "a very high percentage" of suspicious-activity flags at the bank, the OCC said.

The White House issued an executive order Tuesday directing the Treasury department, bank regulators and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to advise banks on "red flags" of informal work arrangements. How agencies implement the order will determine how onerous compliance will ultimately be for banks.

Fincen just proposed the most significant reform to AML compliance in a generation, but its reporting forms are still broken. A handful of key changes would meaningfully reduce compliance burden without reducing investigative value.

Banks weighing stablecoin partnerships need to know whose playbook regulators will endorse before another major crypto theft tests the question.

The Justice Department recategorized state and federally approved cannabis products from Schedule I to Schedule III, a move that falls short of full legalization but could ignite renewed interest from banks and credit unions in servicing state-legal cannabis businesses.

U.S. banks must navigate conflicting signals as Iran's crypto toll demands and rising pig butchering scams exploit the same stablecoin and correspondent banking rails.