Wells Fargo agrees to pay $7M as anti-money laundering settlement

• The firm failed to file nearly 34 suspicious activity reports in recent years 

Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) has agreed to pay $7 million to settle charges of anti-money laundering-related violations to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

An SEC press statement, released on Friday, reported that the broker-dealer arm of Wells Fargo had failed to file at least 34 suspicious activity reports in recent years. 

The lapse arose because the company failed to test a new version of its internal anti-money laundering (AML) transaction monitoring and alert system adopted in January 2019, stated the SEC. The system failed to reconcile the different country codes used to monitor foreign wire transfers.

As a result, Wells Fargo Advisors did not timely file at least 25 SARs related to suspicious transactions in its customers’ brokerage accounts involving wire transfers to or from foreign countries that it determined to be at high or moderate risk for money laundering, terrorist financing, or other illegal money movements.

Source: SEC 

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