TD Bank pleads guilty, will pay $3 billion fine | Wilnesh News

TD Bank pleaded guilty Thursday in a criminal money laundering case and agreed to pay up to $3 billion in fines and other penalties to banks. Ministry of Justice and the failure of federal financial regulators to monitor drug cartels’ money laundering activities.

As part of the deal, TD Bank (whose U.S. branch is the tenth largest bank in the United States) Bank of America In terms of assets, it is accepting limits on its growth, office of the comptroller of the currency announced Thursday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said as part of the settlement, an ombudsman will monitor the bank’s compliance with anti-money laundering practices for three years.

Garland said TD Bank admitted failing to monitor $18.3 trillion in customer activity during the six-year period to October, which allowed three money-laundering networks to move more than $670 million through the bank’s accounts.

Garland said at least one of the schemes involved five bank employees.

“At various times, senior management, including the person who became the bank’s chief anti-money laundering officer, knew that there were serious problems with the bank’s anti-money laundering program, but the bank failed to correct those problems,” the attorney general said.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May that the Justice Department was investigating how Chinese organized crime group Drug traffickers used TD Bank to launder money to sell the deadly opiate fentanyl in the United States.

TD Bank to pay Treasury $1.3 billion as part of Thursday’s settlement Financial Crimes Enforcement NetworkThis is the largest such penalty ever imposed on a depository institution by FinCEN or the Treasury Department. FinCEN also imposed four years of independent oversight of TD Bank to oversee the remediation necessary for its conduct.

“The vast majority of financial institutions work with FinCEN to protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system,” said Treasury Undersecretary Wally Adeyemo. “TD Bank did the opposite.”

“From fentanyl and narcotics trafficking, to terrorist financing and human trafficking, TD Bank’s prolonged collapse has provided fertile ground for a range of illicit activities to infiltrate our financial system,” Adeimo said.

The restrictions on TD Bank’s growth are similar to those imposed by the Federal Reserve on TD Bank’s growth. Wells Fargo In 2018, the Federal Reserve said the bank had engaged in “pervasive consumer abuse.”

this Fed On Thursday, TD Bank was fined more than $124 million for violating anti-money laundering laws, saying the bank failed to “provide adequate risk management and oversight of its retail banking operations in the United States, resulting in a U.S. subsidiary being used to launder money.” Hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., blasted Thursday’s deal in a statement to CNBC.

“The big banks view government fines as a cost of doing business,” Warren said.

“This settlement frees executives at a bad bank from allowing TD Bank to be used as a criminal slush fund. The Department of Justice and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency need to do a better job of enforcing our anti-money laundering laws,” Warren said.

Shares of TD Bank were down more than 3% at noon Thursday.

A spokesman for Toronto-based TD Bank, Canada’s second-largest bank, had no immediate comment.

In September, TD Bank was ordered to pay nearly $28 million. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Consumer reporting agencies were repeatedly provided with customer messages containing numerous errors, and despite being aware of the errors, waited over a year for them to be fixed.

This is developing news. Please check back for updates.