Bank of America hit with $1.2bn fine for money laundering failings

Bank of America has been fined $1.2bn (£910m) for failing to detect potential money laundering and other illegal activity, the US Treasury Department said on Tuesday.The banking giant failed to report over $5bn in suspicious activity to the government, $1bn of which posed national security and illicit finance risks, the Treasury said. Those failures included not flagging transactions that possibly involved Chinese money laundering networks or trade-based laundering "with a substantial nexus to the southwest border", according to the Treasury."Our team is far along with and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators," Bank of America told the BBC.The announcement came less 24 hours before Bank of America was due to announce its quarterly earnings on Wednesday morning."Our third-quarter results will include a non-tax-deductible charge of $1.2 billion impacting net income by approximately 17 cents per share," the bank said in an emailed statement. "We have already dedicated substantial personnel and resources to our ongoing remediation efforts, and those costs are in the current expense base," it added.In announcing the fine, the third-largest the department has ever imposed, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: "When a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations, the consequences extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the entire US financial system to significant illicit finance risks."