Federal Reserve and OFAC levy fines totalling $97.8m on Wells Fargo

Failure of oversight meant bank violated sanctions on Iran, Syria and Sudan.

Troubled bank Wells Fargo has been hit with two more fines, this time totalling $97.8m, for inadequate oversight of compliance risks.

Notices issued by the Federal Reserve and OFAC penalise the bank for enabling the violation of federal sanctions against Iran, Syria and Sudan. The fines relate to inadequate oversight of compliance risks between 2010 and 2015.

The Federal Reserve fine is $67.8m for “providing a trade finance platform to a foreign bank that used the platform to process approximately $532m in prohibited transactions between 2010 and 2015”.

OFAC has imposed a fine of $30m for the same violations which involved Wells Fargo and a predecessor bank, Wachovia. A mid-level Wachovia manager is said to have authorised the customisation of “a trade insourcing software platform for general use by the European bank that Wachovia knew or should have known would involve engaging in trade-finance transactions with sanctioned jurisdictions and persons”.

Some 124 transactions were processed, with a total transactional value of $532m.

Voluntarily reported

The matter was voluntarily reported by Wells Fargo and OFAC says the bank’s senior management had no direct knowledge of the activity until 2015. It said the breach “was not a result of a systemic compliance breakdown within the broader Wells Fargo organization”.

The bank has paid billions in fines to federal authorities in the last year, with December’s $3.7bn penalty over a raft of consumer abuses the biggest ever penalty announced by the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Last month, former Wells Fargo head of retail banking Carrie Tolstedt entered a guilty plea over criminal charges of obstructing a bank investigation, and is expected to appear in court in the next week or so.