By Lindsay Whitehurst | The Associated Press
TD Bank will pay approximately $3 billion in a historic settlement with U.S. authorities who said Thursday that the financial institution’s lax practices allowed significant money laundering over multiple years.
Canada-based TD Bank pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, the largest bank in U.S. history to do so, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
“TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish,” Garland said. “By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one.”
The CEO of the bank, the 10th largest in the United States, said it takes full responsibility and has been cooperating with the investigation.
“This is a difficult chapter in our Bank’s history,” TD Bank CEO Bharat Masrani said in a statement. ”The board has and continues to take action to address these failures and hold those responsible accountable.”
The Justice Department said the bank allowed money laundering networks to move $670 million through TD Bank accounts over a period of several years.
The institution became the bank of choice for multiple criminals and money laundering organizations, authorities said.
“From fentanyl and narcotics trafficking, to terrorist financing and human trafficking, TD Bank’s chronic failures provided fertile ground for a host of illicit activity to penetrate our financial system,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo.
In one case, bank employees helped a criminal network launder tens of millions of dollars, said Nicole Argentieri, head of the department’s Criminal Division.
There were also piles of cash dumped on a bank’s counters and ATM withdrawals that totaled 40 times to 50 times higher than the daily limits, said Philip Sellinger, U.S. attorney in New Jersey.
The bank’s “long-term, pervasive, and systemic deficiencies” in its policies over a period of nine years allowed such abuses to flourish, prosecutors said.
Two dozen people have been prosecuted for involvement in money-laundering schemes, including two TD Bank employees, Garland said. The investigation is ongoing.
The bank has also agreed to major restructuring of the corporate compliance program in its U.S. operations, as well as three years of monitoring and five years of probation.
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