TD Bank Agrees to Pay $3 Billion Over Anti-Money Laundering Violations
“TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish. By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one.”
New Jersey-headquartered TD Bank, which has pleaded guilty to criminal money-laundering charges, agreed to pay $3 billion in fines for failing to maintain Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) programs, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.
During a news conference Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that TD Bank, the 10th largest bank in the country, pleaded guilty to multiple felonies, including conspiracy to violate the BSA and money laundering, and agreed to a $1.8 billion criminal penalty combined with civil enforcement penalties of $1.3 billion.
“TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish,” Garland said. “By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one.”
Garland said that TD Bank, headquartered in Cherry Hill, is the largest bank in U.S. history to plead guilty to BSA program failures and the first bank in history to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, and it faces the largest penalty ever levied under the BSA.
Philip R. Sellinger, U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, joined Garland at the podium during the news conference.
“Today, TD Bank is pleading guilty in the District of New Jersey for its staggering and pervasive anti–money-laundering failures, which include permitting multiple major money-laundering networks to flourish and move hundreds of millions of dollars to TD Bank locations in New Jersey and across the United States,” Sellinger said.
In a news release, the bank confirmed that it entered into plea agreements with the DOJ and others that included a total settlement of $3.09 billion and agreed to remediate TD Bank’s anti-money-laundering program and agreed to formal oversight through a monitorship, among other things.
In a statement, TD Bank group president and CEO Bharat Masrani said that this is a difficult chapter in his company’s history. “These failures took place on my watch as CEO, and I apologize to all our stakeholders,” Masrani said. “I want to thank our colleagues, who continue to demonstrate their dedication and who play an important role in preventing criminal activity.”
From: New Jersey Law Journal