UBS US affiliate fined $125m over bank secrecy breaches

US regulators fined an American affiliate of Swiss bank UBS on Monday for anti-money-laundering failures, with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network imposing a $125 million civil penalty for Bank Secrecy Act violations.

FinCEN described the penalty as the largest against a broker dealer for Bank Secrecy Act violations and called UBS a “recidivist financial institution” after it fell short of commitments under a 2018 settlement on the same issue.

The agency said UBS failed to adequately monitor more than 50,000 foreign currency wires worth more than $10 billion. It also said the bank did not perform sufficient due diligence on high-risk customers with ties to Russia and Latin America and failed to report hundreds of suspicious transactions on time.

A consent order requires UBS to work with a third party on a “lookback” audit covering priority risk areas, including possible narcotics trafficking connected to the US Southwest border, as well as Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

FinCEN acted in parallel with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

A UBS spokesman said the enforcement brought closure to a “legacy matter” and said the bank had cooperated with regulators and invested to strengthen its anti-money-laundering program.