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Ecuadorean Bank Fined $7 Million for Poor Transaction Monitoring, SAR Filing

By Colby Adams

A Miami bank already on the hook with federal regulators for a lax compliance program was fined $7 million Thursday for failing to address multiple Bank Secrecy Act violations. Ecuador-owned Pacific National Bank failed to remedy persistent shortcomings in its reporting of suspicious activity and monitoring of foreign correspondent bank accounts, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said. The bank's personnel "often lacked information necessary to assess, in an accurate and meaningful manner, the risk of money laundering" posed by their customers, 85 percent of whom reside in...

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