UBS fined record $125 million for money laundering violations

UBS Financial Services agreed to wage a $125 cardinal civilian punishment to the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network connected Monday for willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, the superior U.S. anti-money laundering law. FinCEN said the good is the largest ever assessed against a broker-dealer for BSA violations.

The colony marks FinCEN's 2nd enforcement enactment against UBS Financial Services, a subsidiary of the Swiss slope UBS. The steadfast had antecedently paid a $14.5 cardinal punishment successful December 2018 for akin failures, including inadequate monitoring of overseas currency ligament transfers. Despite assurances to regulators that it would hole the underlying problems, the steadfast subsequently failed to show much than 50,000 overseas currency wires with a combined worth exceeding $10 billion, FinCEN said. The violations covered successful Monday's colony occurred betwixt January 2019 and June 2023, according to Reuters.

FinCEN besides recovered that UBS Financial Services failed to behaviour capable lawsuit owed diligence, peculiarly for high-risk clients with ties to Russia and Latin America, and failed to record hundreds of suspicious enactment reports connected time. In 1 illustration cited by Reuters, a Russian oligarch with adjacent Kremlin connections allegedly held accounts astatine UBS adjacent arsenic quality sum raised doubts astir however helium acquired his luck and suggested imaginable wealth laundering ties.

As portion of the consent order, UBS Financial Services admitted to willfully violating the BSA. The steadfast indispensable prosecute an extracurricular advisor to behaviour a reappraisal of its anti-money laundering program, focusing connected risks related to the U.S. Southwest border, cartels, narcotics trafficking, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. FinCEN said it volition waive up to $15 cardinal of the good if the steadfast completes the reappraisal and implements the consultant's recommendations.

"Today's historical enactment against UBSFS should nonstop a wide connection that recidivist fiscal institutions volition look terrible repercussions," FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki said successful a statement. The statement besides brought to a adjacent parallel charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

UBS said successful a connection that it worked constructively with regulators and has devoted resources to improving its anti-money laundering controls.

The good comes arsenic UBS has different been navigating a beardown fiscal period. The slope reported first-quarter 2026 nett net of $3 billion, an 80% summation from a twelvemonth earlier, with its Global Markets trading limb posting what the slope described arsenic an all-time precocious successful revenues. UBS has separately been managing a projected overhaul of Swiss banking regulations that could necessitate astir $20 cardinal successful further halfway capital.