Citigroup's Los Angeles-based subsidiary Banamex USA has agreed to forfeit $97 million to avoid criminal charges for having willfully failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program for at least six years, federal prosecutors disclosed Monday. As a result of understaffing and a "limited and manual" monitoring system, the lender initiated fewer than 10 investigations and filed only nine suspicious activity reports on 30 million total remittances funneled to Mexico through its U.S. branches from 2007 through to 2012, the Justice Department said in a non-prosecution agreement. The remittances to Mexico, which totaled nearly $8.8 billion during that timeframe, often...
Over the past 15 years, wide-ranging regulatory views have been promulgated by U.S. financial regulators. While they are congressionally authorized to issue rules that implement the BSA, subsequent interpretations of those rules have morphed into quasi-rules of their own.
Citigroup subsidiary Banamex USA will pay federal and state agencies $140 million for unresolved anti-money laundering violations ahead of the shutdown of its U.S. operations, the bank and regulators said Wednesday.
In internal reviews and an ongoing criminal and regulatory investigation, Citigroup employees and Mexican officials have privately voiced concerns that drug traffickers may have infiltrated Banamex's anti-money laundering department, say sources.
print