The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed a civil monetary penalty of $125 million against UBS Financial Services on Monday, the largest ever imposed against a broker-dealer for violating the Bank Secrecy Act.
FinCEN found that despite its assurances otherwise, UBSFS did not address the underlying problems that triggered a consent order and $14.5 million penalty against the broker-dealer in December 2018 for failing to screen international wires and vet clients effectively, especially high-risk customers linked to Russia and Latin America.
As a result of the broker-dealer’s unaddressed problems vis-a-vis transaction monitoring, USBFS did not properly screen nearly 62,000 wires with a combined value exceeding $10.5 billion after entering into the consent order seven years ago, according to FinCEN.
The broker-dealer’s due diligence-related violations included a consistent failure to respond to publicly available news that certain customers bore links to illicit finance and, on at least one occasion, an apparent disregard of an affiliate’s expressed concerns over such links.
“As a result of these and other deficiencies, UBSFS failed to timely report hundreds of suspicious transactions, thereby depriving law enforcement of critical information,” FinCEN concluded Monday.
Moneylaundering.com may update this story as more information becomes available.
