Japanese Bank to Pay $250m in Laundering Case Involving Burma

21 June 2013

The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi-UFJ Ltd. will pay US$250 million to the state of New York for laundering billions of dollars in transactions that violated economic sanctions against countries including Iran, Sudan and Burma, New York financial regulators said Thursday. The bank agreed to the fine and a year of special monitoring for handling the 28,000 US dollar transactions totaling about $100 billion through its New York operation between 2002 and 2007. BTMU employees routinely removed information from wire transfer messages that could have identified the government and business entities involved as targets of sanctions, the department said. —AP