UBS Fined $15 Million Over Anti-Money-Laundering Systems
Maria Armental and Samuel Rubenfeld, 17 December, 2018
UBS Group AG agreed to pay a combined $15 million fine over regulatory deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering program, U.S. regulators said Monday.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, said broker-dealer unit UBS Financial Services Inc. violated the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires financial firms to report suspicious activities, over a roughly 13-year period through 2017.
The UBS broker-dealer unit provided clients with what U.S. regulators called “banking-like services,” such as wire transfers, check writing and ATM withdrawals, but it didn’t structure its anti-money-laundering compliance program to address the potential use of its offerings for illicit-finance purposes, regulators said.
UBS is to pay $5 million to the Treasury Department, $5 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission and another $5 million to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the industry-funded brokerage regulator.
The bank “is pleased to have resolved this matter, which addressed certain legacy anti-money-laundering program deficiencies,” a spokesman for UBS said.
