UBS fined 125 million dollars by FinCEN, FINRA, CFTC for willful Bank Secrecy Act violations, largest ever vs broker-dealer
UBS $UBS Financial Services hit with $125M in US penalties from FinCEN, FINRA and CFTC for willful Bank Secrecy Act violations, the largest ever against a broker-dealer. Failed to vet high-risk clients tied to Russia and Latin America, 2019-2023. Fined $14.5M for similar failures
UBS Financial Services, the US broker-dealer arm of the Swiss banking giant, has agreed to pay $125 million in combined civil penalties to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FINRA and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, the primary US anti-money laundering law. FinCEN called it the largest civil penalty ever imposed on a broker-dealer for BSA violations. FINRA and the CFTC accounted for $20 million and $8 million of the total, respectively. UBS $UBS admitted it willfully failed to implement and maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and failed to file required suspicious activity reports. Regulators said the firm also failed to perform adequate customer due diligence, particularly for high-risk clients with ties to Russia and Latin America, over a period stretching from January 2019 to June 2023. The case underscores that UBS is a repeat offender: FinCEN fined the bank $14.5 million in December 2018 for related Bank Secrecy Act failures, and this settlement covers violations that continued after that first penalty. The size and structure of the fine, spanning three separate US regulators, signals that Washington is treating the bank's compliance gaps as a sustained, not one-time, failure.