(FamilyConservationPAC.com) – On Thursday, Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank entered a guilty plea for failing to prohibit the money laundering of drug cartels that sold Americans deadly fentanyl.
After admitting guilt in the criminal case, the multinational financial institution must pay the Department of Justice (DOJ) $3 billion in fines and other penalties.
After growing from Canada, TD, which is currently the tenth-largest bank in America, has also agreed to growth limits, according to CNBC. As a US bank, TD can only possess a maximum of $434 billion in assets.
Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that the bank will be inspected for the next three years to ensure it adheres to stringent anti-money laundering procedures.
According to Garland, TD Bank disregarded $18.3 trillion in customer transactions over a six-year period, which allowed three money laundering networks to use the bank to channel $670 million in money laundering through TD Bank accounts.
At least one money laundering operation involved TD Bank personnel directly.
“At various times, high-level executives, including the person who became the bank’s chief anti-money laundering officer, knew there were serious problems with the bank’s anti-money laundering program, but the bank failed to correct them,” Garland told a news conference.
According to Garland, the DOJ isn’t done with the case yet and will continue with other prosecutions.
When asked if the other people were TD Bank executives, Garland responded, “My general response to these kinds of questions is, we don’t comment on ongoing investigations, but I was indicating that we would expect future cases against individuals.”
In May, the Wall Street Journal revealed DOJ operations against the bank, looking into how Chinese organized crime was using TD to launder money taken from US fentanyl sales.
Additionally, the bank will be required to pay the biggest penalties ever imposed on a financial institution in the United States, $1.3 billion, to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
In light of his four years in the White House, President Joe Biden recently said that “for years too little has been done” to stop the spread of fentanyl and addiction in the US.
“The vast majority of financial institutions have partnered with FinCEN to protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. “TD Bank did the opposite.”
According to the Federal Reserve Board, TD Bank is subject to growth limitations similar to those that Wells Fargo faced when it was found guilty of encouraging “widespread consumer abuses,” as CNBC reported.
“From fentanyl and narcotics trafficking to terrorist financing and human trafficking, TD Bank’s chronic failures provided fertile ground for a host of illicit activity to penetrate our financial system,” Adeyemo said.
The Federal Reserve also fined TD over $124 million for violating anti-money laundering laws.
The Fed stated that the bank did not conduct adequate risk management and oversight of its retail banking operations in the United States, which resulted in a U.S. subsidiary being used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds.
In a statement, TD Bank Group CEO Bharat Masrani said, “We have taken full responsibility for the failures of our U.S. AML program and are making the investments, changes, and enhancements required to deliver on our commitments.”
“This is a difficult chapter in our Bank’s history. These failures took place on my watch as CEO and I apologize to all our stakeholders,” Masrani said.
Aside from historical fines, do you believe criminal charges against the CEO and other top-level officials are warranted?
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