Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation. bank of america The company and its executives came after the major bank admitted to knowingly violating federal anti-money laundering laws, according to a letter first shared with CNBC.
The Massachusetts Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee called the more than $1.2 billion fine imposed on the bank on Oct. 13 a “slap on the wrist” and asked Attorney General Todd Blanche to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.
“Documented violations by Bank of America have enabled illegal actors to move billions of dollars through the U.S. financial system,” Warren wrote.
He asked the Justice Department to respond by Nov. 12 whether it has investigated the practice and, if not, whether it plans to do so.
Bank of America and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.
The letter comes just over two weeks after Treasury regulators accused the nation’s second-largest bank of serious compliance violations over the years in one of the largest anti-money laundering enforcement actions in Treasury Department history.
As part of its settlement with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Bank of America admitted that it knowingly violated the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program and to properly report suspicious activity.
Regulators said the bank failed to timely report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions. More than $1 billion involved national security and other high-priority risks, including activity indicative of a Chinese money laundering network and transactions related to the U.S. southwest border.
The Treasury Department said Bank of America sometimes “prioritized profits” over compliance and relied heavily on law enforcement investigations and inquiries from other financial institutions rather than its own systems to identify suspicious activity.
Regulators have imposed more than $1.2 billion in fines, including a record $750 million fine from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The action did not include criminal charges against the bank or its executives.
After announcing the measures, the bank said it had invested billions of dollars in compliance measures and was making “substantial progress” in addressing the issue.
Warren argues that civil penalties are insufficient.
“Civil fines have become the cost of doing business on Wall Street,” she wrote, pointing to federal law that provides civil as well as criminal penalties for intentional violations of the Bank Secrecy Act.
Bank of America was already operating under a 2024 cease-and-desist order due to deficiencies in anti-money laundering controls. Regulators said this month that the bank had not made enough progress to address some of those issues.
