Bank of America fined $1.21bn over anti-money-laundering failures

US regulators have imposed more than $1.21 billion in penalties on Bank of America for anti-money-laundering and sanctions failures. The Treasury Department said the bank did not timely report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, including over $1 billion linked to national-security or other priority illicit-finance risks.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed a $1.2 billion penalty, crediting a concurrent $750 million fine from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The OCC called the bank’s compliance programme deficient and ineffective and said weaknesses identified in a 2024 order had not been adequately corrected. Treasury’s sanctions office separately announced an $11.6 million settlement covering more than 400 apparent violations.

Bank of America said financial-crime compliance was its responsibility, that it had invested billions of dollars and thousands of staff in the work, and that remediation was well advanced. A consent order requires an independent review of past transactions and the filing of reports that should have been made earlier. The bank said the charge would reduce quarterly earnings by about 17 cents a share.

Google Trends showed more than 2,000 US searches for the fine during the previous four hours, up over 500%. That regional surge reflects attention, not proof; the findings come from regulator orders and reporting.