US Treasury fines Bank of America for sanctions violations, including against Belarus
The US Department of the Treasury has fined Bank of America $11.66 million for 475 alleged violations of sanctions programs. Two Belarusian banks, blocked under sanctions against Belarus, are involved in the case. Their names and the amounts of transactions involving them are not disclosed, writes "Radio Svaboda" (Radio Liberty).
Photo: AP Photo / Steven Senne, File
On October 13, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury announced that Bank of America agreed to pay $11,662,930 to settle its potential civil liability. The case concerns alleged violations of sanctions programs related to Russia, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Somalia, drug trafficking, and international terrorism.
According to OFAC, the violations occurred through processing payments involving blocked banks, improper response to alerts regarding customers whose names and dates of birth matched those of sanctioned individuals, untimely updating of sanctions lists, and erroneous processing of two business accounts linked to such individuals.
OFAC stated that it considered the violations not to be egregious but noted that most of them were not voluntarily disclosed by the bank.
For example, from February 2022 to March 2023, Bank of America conducted 403 transactions through 35 blocked banks. The total amount of these operations was $14,340,100. Among them were transactions involving two banks blocked under the sanctions program against Belarus. However, American authorities did not specify which exact banks these were or what amounts were associated with each of them.
Sanctions against the Belarusian authorities have been imposed, in particular, due to mass repressions and support for Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. Recently, the US government has adopted several decisions to lift individual restrictions as part of agreements on the release of political prisoners.
The US and the European Union continue to identify schemes used by sanctioned regimes and drug traffickers to move money, smuggle goods, and acquire critical technologies. According to the US Department of the Treasury, such measures should limit the ability of sanctioned entities to obtain financial resources and use them for illegal activities that harm the US.
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