Bank of America fined $1.2bn over money-laundering failings

The US Treasury has fined Bank of America $1.2bn, saying the bank inadequately flagged transactions linked to potential Chinese money-laundering networks. That is the specific failure named in the Treasury's account, and it is the reason the penalty lands on a bank rather than on the networks themselves: the compliance system is the thing under examination. A fine of this size is not a reprimand about paperwork. It prices a control function that regulators judge to have missed the transactions passing through it.