Canadian bank TD Bank has agreed to plead guilty to violating United States money laundering laws and to pay approximately $3 billion in penalties to American authorities, the latter announced Wednesday.
The credit institution, whose American subsidiary is the tenth largest bank in the United States by size of assets, was notably accused of having allowed criminals to launder several hundred million dollars.
TD Bank is the largest bank in the country’s history to plead guilty to money laundering, according to the US Department of Justice, which accuses the company of failing to monitor transactions from 2014 to 2023.
The group has committed to fundamentally restructuring its compliance procedures and accepted a five-year probationary period.
Among the clients suspected of illegal activities were drug traffickers, explained the American Minister of Justice, Merrick Garland, during a press briefing.
Several bank employees have been indicted by the American authorities for having facilitated or even contributed to the laundering of drug money. Two of them have already been charged, the minister said.
According to him, “senior managers, including the person who became the anti-money laundering manager, knew that the supervisory framework had serious problems, but the bank did not seek to remedy” these problems.
Merrick Garland cited the example of a drug trafficker intermediary who, after going through several financial institutions, chose to work only with TD Bank, which had “the most permissive regulations and procedures” regarding money laundering. .
Informed of the investigation and having agreed to collaborate with the Ministry of Justice, TD Bank had already provisioned 4.2 billion Canadian dollars, or approximately 3 billion US dollars, for the payment of these penalties, according to its quarterly accounts. published at the end of August.
