Calling it the largest such fine it has assessed against a broker-dealer, Treasury’s financial crimes enforcement network Monday announced a $125 million fine against UBS Financial Services Inc. (UBSFS) over “willful” violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said the institution, among other things, failed to perform appropriate customer due diligence (CDD), particularly regarding its services to high-risk customers with ties to Russia and Latin America. As part of its resolution with FinCEN, the agency said, UBSFS admits that it willfully violated the BSA, including failing to implement and maintain an anti-money laundering (AML) program, and file suspicious activity reports (SARs).
“Financial institutions are expected to promptly remediate AML compliance failures uncovered by regulators, auditors, and employees,” the agency said. “In this instance, FinCEN found that UBSFS continued to fail to monitor foreign currency transactions well after entering a settlement with FinCEN, the SEC, and FINRA for the same failures.”
The firm “failed to meaningfully address those concerns for years, with significant aspects of such remediation not undertaken until FinCEN’s investigation was already underway,” FinCEN said.
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