WASHINGTON — TD Bank will pay approximately $3 billion in a historic settlement with U.S. authorities who said Thursday that the financial institution’s lax practices allowed significant money laundering over multiple years.
Canada-based TD Bank pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, the largest bank in U.S. history to do so, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
“TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish,” Garland said.
The CEO of the bank, the 10th largest in the United States, said it takes full responsibility and has been cooperating with the investigation.
“This is a difficult chapter in our Bank’s history,” TD Bank CEO Bharat Masrani said in a statement. ”The board has and continues to take action to address these failures and hold those responsible accountable.”
The Justice Department said the bank’s failure to prevent money laundering made it “convenient” for criminals. That allowed money-laundering networks to move hundreds of millions of dollars through TD Bank accounts over a period of years, prosecutors said.
Bank employees helped one criminal network launder tens of millions of dollars, said Nicole Argentieri, head of the department’s Criminal Division.
In other cases, piles of cash were dumped a bank’s counters and ATM withdrawals totaled 40 times to 50 times higher than the daily limits, said Philip Sellinger, U.S. attorney in New Jersey.
The bank’s “long-term, pervasive, and systemic deficiencies” in its policies over a period of nine years allowed such abuses to flourish, prosecutors said.