The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed a $125 million civil monetary penalty against UBS Financial Services for Bank Secrecy Act violations.
The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed a $125 million civil monetary penalty against UBS Financial Services on Monday. This penalty represents the largest ever imposed against a broker-dealer for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network found that UBS Financial Services failed to address underlying problems that triggered a previous 2018 consent order. Specifically, the firm failed to properly screen nearly 62,000 wires with a combined value exceeding $10.5 billion. These violations included a consistent failure to respond to publicly available news regarding customers with links to illicit finance. FinCEN concluded that these deficiencies caused UBS Financial Services to fail to report hundreds of suspicious transactions in a timely manner. This failure deprived law enforcement of critical information necessary for tracking financial crimes.