Credit card company Capital One fined for violating US anti-money laundering law

ARCHIVE PHOTO: Capital One’s logo and ticker are displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, USA, May 21, 2018. REUTERS / Brendan McDermid / Photo from the archive

(Reuters) – Credit card company Capital One Financial Corp was fined $ 390 million for engaging in what the U.S. government called deliberate and negligent violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, a money laundering law, said a Treasury Department office on Friday.

The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said in a statement that Capital One admitted to have intentionally failed to implement and maintain an effective money laundering protection program, as required by law. (bit.ly/3qmXFji)

FinCEN said the financial services company admitted that it was unable to file “thousands of reports of suspicious activity” and “thousands of reports of monetary transactions” with respect to a business unit known as the Check Discount Group.

“The flaws described in this inspection action are striking,” said FinCEN director Kenneth Blanco in a statement.

The breaches occurred from at least 2008 to 2014 and caused millions of dollars in suspicious transactions to not be reported in a timely and accurate manner, added FinCEN.

Reporting by Arundhati Sarkar in Bengaluru; Will Dunham edition

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