FinCEN Fines UBS Financial Services $125 Million Over 62,000 Unscrutinized Wires
Updated
Updated · acams.org · Mar 8
FinCEN Fines UBS Financial Services $125 Million Over 62,000 Unscrutinized Wires
3 articles · Updated · acams.org · Mar 8
Summary
$125 million is the largest Bank Secrecy Act penalty ever imposed on a broker-dealer, with FinCEN saying UBS Financial Services left major compliance failures unresolved after a 2018 consent order.
Nearly 62,000 international wires worth more than $10.5 billion were not properly screened over seven years, according to FinCEN, because the firm failed to fix transaction-monitoring, client-vetting and wire-screening weaknesses.
FinCEN said those lapses were especially acute for high-risk customers linked to Russia and Latin America, and included failures to act on public reporting and, at least once, an affiliate's concerns about illicit-finance ties.
Hundreds of suspicious transactions were not reported on time, FinCEN said, depriving law enforcement of information and underscoring regulators' focus on repeat anti-money-laundering violations.