U.S. authorities have fined UBS Financial Services $125 million, the Treasury Department announced, concluding an enforcement action that found the firm willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act - the principal U.S. anti-money laundering statute. The Treasury described the penalty as the largest ever levied on a broker-dealer for violations of that law.
The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said UBS had previously been penalized in 2018, when it was fined $14.5 million for shortcomings in the monitoring of foreign currency wire transfers. FinCEN said those earlier findings prompted commitments from UBS to address the deficiencies, but that the firm did not fully remediate the problems.
According to the regulator, UBS failed to properly monitor more than 50,000 foreign currency wires with an aggregate value exceeding $10 billion. FinCEN additionally noted that UBS did not disclose those monitoring failures to authorities, a point the agency cited in labeling the firm a repeat offender.
In response to the enforcement action, UBS issued a brief statement saying, "Today's announcement brings closure to this legacy matter." The bank added that it has cooperated fully with regulators and has made substantial investments to remediate and strengthen its anti-money laundering program in line with leading industry practices.
The penalty and the regulatory findings reflect the authorities' view that the firm had ongoing deficiencies in monitoring transactional activity tied to foreign currency wires and that prior remediation efforts did not resolve the issues identified in the earlier enforcement action. The Treasury's characterization of the fine underscores the scale of the enforcement action relative to past broker-dealer penalties under the Bank Secrecy Act.
Context and next steps
FinCEN's statement and the civil penalty conclude the agency's enforcement process in this matter. UBS said it has cooperated with regulators and invested in its compliance infrastructure, while FinCEN emphasized the firm had previously been fined in 2018 for related monitoring deficiencies.
The case centers on the firm's surveillance and disclosure practices for foreign currency wires, the volume and aggregate value of which were specifically cited by FinCEN.