Citigroup Affiliate Shells out Nearly $100 Million To Settle AML Probe

Josh O'Neill

23 May 2017

A subsidiary of Citigroup has agreed to pay more than $97 million after admitting to having a weak anti-money laundering program, the US Department of Justice announced earlier this week.

The penalty resolves a criminal probe at Banamex, the Mexican affiliate of the US banking giant, which found that from 2007 to 2012, the firm carried out fewer than 10 investigations on more than 18,000 alerts involving more than $142 million in potentially suspicious transactions, the DoJ said.

The DoJ signed a non-prosecution agreement with Banamex after it agreed to invest in remediation and cooperated with the probe, the government agency said.

“As Banamex began to expand its remittance processing business in 2006, Banamex understood the need to enhance its anti-money laundering efforts, yet failed to make necessary improvements to its transaction monitoring controls or to add staffing resources,” the DoJ said in a statement.

The penalty is on top of a $140 million in civil fines Banamex paid to US and California agencies over a separate bank secrecy act investigation.

In October, Citigroup announced it was pumping $1 billion into Banamex and renaming it Citibanamex.