TD Bank pleads guilty in money laundering case and pays $3 billion in fines

TD Bank On Thursday, it pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering case and agreed to pay $3 billion in fines and other penalties. Department of Justice and federal financial regulators for failing to monitor money laundering by drug cartels.

As part of the deal, TD Bank, whose U.S. unit is the 10th largest American Bank by wealth, is pushing its growth beyond limits, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced Thursday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said a monitor will oversee the bank's compliance with anti-money laundering practices for three years as part of a settlement.

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

At least one of those schemes involved five bank employees, Garland said.

“At various times, high-level executives, including the man who became the bank's anti-money laundering director, knew that there were serious problems with the bank's anti-money laundering program, but the bank failed to correct them,” said the attorney general. he said.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May that the DOJ was investigating how Chinese organized crime groups and drug traffickers used TD Bank to launder proceeds from the sale of the deadly opioid fentanyl in the United States.

“TD Bank’s continued prioritization of growth over regulation allows its employees to break the law and launder millions of dollars. The bank’s apparent failure to manage risk has attracted illegal actors and is serious and unacceptable,” Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hu said in a statement.

Restrictions on TD Bank's growth are similar to restrictions imposed by the Federal Reserve Wells Fargo In 2018, the Fed accused the bank of what it called “massive consumer abuse.”

D Federal Reserve Board TD Bank was fined more than $124 million on Thursday for violating anti-money laundering laws, saying the bank “failed to adequately manage and supervise its retail banking operations in the United States, the which resulted in the use of a US subsidiary to launder hundreds of millions of dollars.” of dollars in illicit proceeds.”

Sen. Rep. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized Thursday's deal in a statement to CNBC.

“Big banks treat government fines as a cost of doing business,” Warren said.

“This settlement exonerates bad bank executives for 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 enforcing our anti-money laundering laws,” Warren said.

TD Bank shares fell more than 3% at midday Thursday

A spokeswoman 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 Repeatedly providing consumer reporting agencies with information about consumers that contained numerous errors and waiting more than a year to correct those errors despite know about them.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.