The first-ever enforcement action against a trust company was announced Thursday by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN): a $1.5 million civil money penalty against The Kingdom Trust Company, over “willful violations” of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and its implementing rules.
In its order, FinCEN said Kingdom Trust – chartered in North Dakota and maintaining trust services in Murray, Ky. – “admits to the Statement of Facts and Violations” and “consents to the issuance of this Consent Order.”
The Treasury financial crimes enforcement office said that Kingdom Trust “admits that it willfully failed to accurately and timely report hundreds of transactions to FinCEN involving suspicious activity by its customers, including transactions with connections to a trade-based money laundering scheme and multiple securities fraud schemes that were the subject of both criminal and civil actions.”
The firm “relied on a manual review of daily transactions by a single employee to identify potentially suspicious transactions and activity at various points” throughout the period at issue, the order states.