US Treasury fines Bank of America more than $1.2 billion over money-laundering and sanctions failures
The US Treasury said Bank of America did not report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions on time. The penalties include a $750 million civil penalty from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the largest that agency has imposed.
Treasury penalties
The US Treasury Department announced on Tuesday, 13 October 2026, penalties of more than $1.2 billion against Bank of America for breaking anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws. The department described the bank as the second-largest in the United States by assets, and the penalty is the third-largest in the Treasury's history. Regulators say the bank did not report on time more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, and roughly a fifth of that sum touched on national security concerns. Among the activities left unreported were Chinese money-laundering networks, according to the department's statement.
What regulators found
The FinCEN penalty concerns the bank's failure to mitigate and report priority risks, including Chinese money-laundering networks and illicit financing along the southwest border. Regulators argue the bank did not respond adequately to a growing number of warning signs about certain customers, and they say it should have alerted FinCEN about the suspicious transactions. Treasury also said the bank appeared to violate sanctions hundreds of times and processed millions of dollars in payments that allegedly broke sanctions programs, as well as programs targeting terrorism and narcotics. The department said the bank admitted deliberately violating the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, a law that requires banks to help the government detect and prevent money laundering. According to the Treasury, the bank put its revenue ahead of procedures designed to block transactions benefiting drug traffickers.
Penalty breakdown
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency imposed a $750 million civil penalty, the largest that agency has imposed, according to the Treasury. Separately, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control reached an $11.6 million settlement with the bank over apparent violations of several sanctions programs, including those concerning Iran and Russia. The settlement programs also cover Belarus, Myanmar and Somalia, along with narcotics and global terrorism. The two amounts announced on Tuesday are shown below.
- OCC civil penalty
- 750 USD million
- OFAC settlement
- 11.6 USD million
Review order and bank response
A court document says the bank will allow outside examiners to analyze its suspicious transactions. Bank of America told Bloomberg that it had already invested billions of dollars in technology to fight financial crime. In a statement, the bank said it had assigned thousands of employees to that effort and was working to fix the problems regulators criticized. The bank also said compliance with financial crime rules is a serious matter that it takes seriously.
Earnings impact
Bank of America plans to publish its third-quarter results before the market opens on 14 October. It expects those results to include a non-deductible charge of $1.2 billion linked to the penalties. That charge would reduce net income by about 17 cents per share. The next scheduled disclosure from the bank is that earnings release.
