US government fines Canada’s TD Bank $3 billion for failing to monitor money laundering by drug cartels

October 10 (THEWILL) – The United States government has fined a Canadian financial institution, TD Bank, more than $3 billion in settlements for failing to properly monitor money laundering by drug cartels.

The penalty includes a $1.3 billion penalty to be paid to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). This is in addition to the $1.8 billion owed to the US Department of Justice (DoJ) following a guilty plea that it violated the Bank Secrecy Act and permitted money laundering.

A DoJ statement said TD Bank had “longstanding, pervasive and systemic deficiencies” in its transaction monitoring procedures.

According to court documents, between January 2018 and April 2024, more than 90% of transactions went unaudited, allowing “three money laundering networks to collectively transfer more than $670 million through TD Bank accounts.

In one case, the DoJ said, TD Bank employees collected more than $57,000 in gift cards to process more than $470 million in cash deposits from a money laundering ring to “ensure that employees would continue to process their transactions” and not send them into to declare mandatory documents. reports.

For its part, the Office of the Comptroller of the Coin (OCC), a US agency that regulates banks, said TD processed hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions that clearly indicated highly suspicious activity.

The bank will be subject to four years of supervision by FinCEN to more closely observe the lender and ensure its compliance with the agreement.

“The vast majority of financial institutions work with FinCEN to protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system. TD Bank did the opposite. From fentanyl and narcotics trafficking to terrorist financing and human trafficking, TD Bank’s chronic failures have provided fertile ground for a host of illicit activities to enter our financial system,” said Wally Adeyemo, U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in a statement.

The US Federal Reserve has also fined TD Bank and will force the company to move its anti-money laundering office to the United States.

And in a significant part of the agreement, the OCC limits TD Bank’s growth in the United States.