Hiltzik: The top executives skate again for breaking bank laws

By any measure, the lawbreaking by the U.S. subsidiary of Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank was spectacular.

The bank, which goes by the name TD Bank in the U.S., facilitated the laundering of more than a half-billion dollars by human traffickers, fentanyl dealers, a major Ponzi schemer and others. It failed to file legally mandated reports of suspicious transactions even though one of the launderers had deposited and withdrawn “more than $1 million in cash in a single day.”

All this was laid out in settlements with the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, announced on Oct. 10. The settlement will cost TD Bank more than $3 billion in penalties and includes a guilty plea to a count of conspiring to violate anti-money-laundering laws. The settlement notes sourly that the bank’s cooperation with authorities was “limited.”

Noting that the bank’s slogan is “America’s Most Convenient Bank,” Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland stated, “There is something terribly wrong with a bank that knowingly makes its services convenient for criminals.”

Yet the settlement is prompting Justice Department critics to ask whether its terms are just too convenient for the bank. That’s because it lacks a crucial deterrent in white-collar-crime cases: criminal charges against TD’s top executives who were in place while the lawbreaking was in full cry.

That was just one way that the deal allowed “this lawbreaking bank and its reckless leadership to escape the full scope of penalties … necessary to effectively deter future criminal acts,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) stated last week in a scathing letter to Garland.

The Justice Department also charged the bank with “conspiring … to launder” money rather than with money laundering itself, Warren observed — a distinction that frees the bank from a federal law that might have resulted in the loss of its banking license in the U.S.

The department’s failure to charge TD Bank’s top executives thus far, Warren wrote, is at odds with the agency’s own explicit commitment to “individual accountability,” as Deputy Atty. Gen. Lisa Monaco put it in a speech earlier this year. “Companies can only act through individuals,” Monaco said. As of now, only two low-level TD Bank employees have been charged in the money-laundering scheme. Warren asked Garland to give her an explanation of the TD Bank deal by Nov. 15.

Garland stated in announcing the settlement that his agency’s “criminal investigations into individual employees at every level of TD Bank are active and ongoing” and that he expects “more prosecutions.” He didn’t specify who was in the agency’s gunsights, but the plea agreement says the wrongdoing extended from branch-level employees, who accepted bribes to keep suspect accounts open, to “senior executive management.”

Warren is correct to point out that the failure to charge and convict the high-level executives who oversee wrongdoing, often over a period of years, is a major contributor to the persistence of corporate white-collar crime. Official wrist-slaps and “wet smooches” delivered to corporate leaders by federal regulators and prosecutors are the rule, no matter how egregious the misdeed — even when it’s as bad as the Wells Fargo customer fraud.

In that case, the Securities and Exchange Commission imposed a $2.5-million penalty on John Stumpf, the bank’s ex-chairman and chief executive, who had collected about $300 million in compensation while the fraud was going on under his nose. The SEC didn’t even require him to admit his responsibility.

Over the last quarter-century, notes the corporate corruption watchdog Better Markets, the nation’s six largest banks “have been the subject of 490 legal actions against them and more than $207 billion in fines and settlements.” Nevertheless “the responsible individuals at the banks almost always walk away unpunished, with their pockets stuffed with bonus money.”

That applies to the TD Bank case. The settlement is “a big and long-overdue win for Main Street Americans and the financial system,” noted Dennis Kelleher, co-founder and CEO of Better Markets. “A big bank engaging in criminal conduct has finally been properly punished, but failing to charge individual banking supervisors and executives is wrong and dumb.”

Letting them off the hook “sends the wrong message: big banks can still buy get-out-of-jail-free cards for their executives by paying big fines and agreeing to other penalties,” Kelleher commented.

It’s true that the Justice Department and FinCEN lowered the boom on TD Bank nearly to the maximum in their power. In addition to the financial penalties, which are the largest ever imposed on a U.S. bank in a money-laundering case, the U.S. subsidiary is forbidden for now to grow beyond the $434 billion in assets it held as of Sept. 30 and is restricted from opening more branches or offering new services without government permission. It must employ an outside compliance monitor for at least five years.

Among the casualties of the government investigation is TD Bank’s planned $13.3-billion merger with Memphis-based First Horizon Bank. The deal collapsed in May 2023 when it emerged that the money-laundering probe would obstruct government approval of the merger.

TD Bank is the 10th-largest commercial bank in the U.S., with 1,100 branches on the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to Florida. But it has been determined to grow while keeping its focus on customer relations — an ambition that regulators say led it to shortchange its anti-money-laundering programs even as it became clear that they were increasingly unable to handle the flow of suspect transactions.

TD Bank Group, the Canadian parent holding company, hasn’t downplayed the gravity of the charges.

“We have taken full responsibility for the failures of our U.S. [anti-money-laundering] program and are making the investments, changes and enhancements required to deliver on our commitments,” Bharat Masrani, CEO of the parent, said after the settlement announcement. “These failures took place on my watch as CEO and I apologize to all our stakeholders.” Masrani is scheduled to step down in April.

To assess whether the penalties levied on TD Bank are appropriate, let’s consider the facts as set forth in the bank’s plea agreement.

Money launderers exploited what they saw as holes in the bank’s anti-money-laundering practices from January 2014 through October 2023. Three illicit networks laundered more than $600 million in ill-gotten lucre through TD Bank accounts within that period.

Perhaps the most prolific launderer, according to the government, was Da Ying Sze, who was known to bank employees as “David” and laundered some $400 million in narcotics profits at the bank.

Sze scarcely tried to conceal his activities: He would often walk into branches carrying bags of cash. It was he who would sometimes make deposits of more than $1 million a day and withdraw it almost immediately by bank checks. The bank “failed to identify Sze” as the customer in more than 500 required reports it filed, covering about $474 million in currency transactions, according to FinCEN.

One day, after witnessing Sze buy more than $1 million in bank checks with cash, according to FinCEN, a branch employee asked a bank office staff member, “How is that not money laundering?” The staffer replied, “oh it 100% is.”

Sze pleaded guilty to federal money-laundering charges in 2022.

The shortcomings of TD’s money-laundering oversight were known to the executives directly responsible for the program and to the bank’s board, the Justice Department said. The bank’s operational response was hopelessly inattentive. Accounts involved in “David’s” network, the department said, made $168.4 million in transactions even “after the Bank determined the accounts should be closed.”

As is so often the case when an institution is found to have broken the law in a major way, this isn’t TD Bank’s first walk on the wrong side. In 2020, it reached a $122-million settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over accusations that it charged more than 1.4 million customers illegal overdraft fees. (The bank didn’t admit to the allegations, but the settlement included $97 million in customer restitution. Four years later, the CFPB ordered the bank to pay nearly $28 million, for allegedly sending inaccurate negative reports about its customers to credit reporting firms. (The bank again didn’t admit guilt, but the order included about $8 million in compensation to the affected customers.)

Last year, the bank agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle a lawsuit accusing it of involvement in a $7-billion Ponzi scheme orchestrated by con man Allen Stanford, who is now in prison. The money is earmarked to compensate victims; the bank didn’t admit liability and asserted that it merely provided Stanford’s company with conventional banking services.

In 2017, officials at the Trump-controlled Office of the Comptroller of the Currency quietly reprimanded the bank for a Wells Fargo-like scheme in which bank employees secretly created new accounts for customers or enrolled them in services without their knowledge. The agency didn’t fine the bank or even disclose its action at the time.

As for whether the government’s action will cure TD Bank of its slipshod approach to money laundering, only time will tell.

But there’s reason to wonder whether it is effectively cleaning house. Under “clawback” provisions of its executive pay policies, Masrani’s pay was reduced by about $1.245 million last year to $9.55 million, an 11.3% cut from the $10.8 million he received in 2022. (Those figures are U.S. dollar equivalents although he and other executives are paid in Canadian dollars.) Further clawbacks may be imposed on his 2024 pay. His designated successor, Raymond Chun, has been with the company since 1992.

As for the board of directors, who receive annual stipends of $260,000 (Canadian) per year, none of the 14 directors other than Masrani has publicly indicated any intention to step down. Eleven were in place during the 2014-23 period, when money launderers ran rampant through the bank; the longest-serving director has been on the board since 2010. If TD Bank is to get a new broom, it’s unclear where it will come from.