United States Fines TD Bank $3 Billion for Money Laundering
TD Bank pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges Thursday, including conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act and commit money laundering, the U.S. Department of Justice said. The bank has also agreed to pay $3 billion in fines to U.S. authorities, the largest penalty ever imposed by the U.S. government on a bank for violating anti-money laundering laws. “TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish by making its services convenient for criminals,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference. “By making its services convenient for criminals, TD Bank became one of them,” he added. TD Bank’s guilty pleas are part of a joint agreement with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (FRB), the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
The bank pleaded guilty to conspiring to fail to maintain an anti-money laundering program that complied with the Bank Secrecy Act, to failing to file accurate currency transaction reports, and to laundering money. According to authorities, it went more than a decade without updating its anti-money laundering compliance program to address known risks, which made the bank an “easy target” for criminals. Furthermore, the organization’s failures allowed “corrupt employees” to facilitate a criminal network laundering “tens of millions of dollars” by failing to properly monitor transactions. Authorities noted that from January 1, 2018 to April 12, 2024, 92% of the total volume of transactions was not supervised. As part of the settlement, federal banking regulators also imposed a limit on TD Bank’s ability to accept new deposits in the United States, a move intended to limit its ability to grow in the market, The New York Times added. Authorities also said investigations are continuing. So far, the Justice Department has charged more than two dozen people with these crimes, including two bank employees.
