Warren Presses Department of Justice on Failure to Hold TD Bank Executives Accountable, “Legal Gymnastics” That Allowed Bank to Escape “Death Penalty”
$670 million laundered through TD Bank
“These charging decisions represent absurd legal gymnastics by DOJ that ultimately have allowed the bank and its top executives to avoid full responsibility for their actions. This is not an acceptable outcome.”
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, questioning them on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) “legal gymnastics” that allowed TD Bank to escape the bank death penalty — and DOJ’s failure thus far to hold any top executives accountable for egregious crimes. DOJ’s recent settlement with TD Bank over money laundering and other charges did not include any of the bank’s high-level executives, and appears to be intentionally structured so that the bank can escape the full scope of penalties for its failures.
“The way that DOJ structured the plea agreement ensures that TD Bank will not face the full range of penalties that Congress has enacted for banks that engage in criminal money laundering,” wrote Senator Warren.
Senator Warren noted that TD Bank’s crimes hurt hundreds of thousands of people. Top executives allowed the bank to act as a criminal slush fund, knowingly presiding over a criminally deficient anti-money laundering program while growing the bank such that its “risk profile increas(ed) significantly.”
“These shocking failures enabled three separate money laundering syndicates to launder more than $670 million through the bank between 2019 and 2023. The magnitude of the dollar value of these illicit transactions is dwarfed only by the obviousness of the criminal activity,” wrote Senator Warren.
The letter highlights past comments from Deputy Attorney General Monaco which emphasized the importance of “individual accountability” and the need to “identify the most serious wrongdoers, whether individuals or companies” and hold them accountable. Senator Warren noted that the TD Bank settlement does not meet DOJ’s own apparent standards.
Though the penalties against TD Bank appropriately include an asset cap and a $3 billion fine, “(u)ntil and unless those executives who presided over TD Bank’s institutionalized money laundering are held accountable, banks will continue to factor enforcement fines into the cost of doing business, rather than approaching compliance with our money laundering laws with the seriousness it requires,” wrote Senator Warren.
The structure of DOJ’s settlement also enables TD Bank to evade the full scope of bank regulators’ consequences for its misdeeds. Specifically, the charges shift responsibility for the hundreds of millions of dollars in money laundering from TD Bank to its holding company, which precludes the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) from invoking the bank “death penalty” provision.
“These charging decisions represent absurd legal gymnastics by DOJ that ultimately have allowed the bank and its top executives to avoid full responsibility for their actions. This is not an acceptable outcome,” wrote Senator Warren.
Senator Warren has fought to hold corporations and their executives accountable for lawbreaking:
- In October 2024, Senators Warren and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, urging DOJ to investigate Boeing executives following years of promoting short-term profits over passenger safety.
- In October 2023, Senator Warren sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, calling on the DOJ to immediately reverse its newly unveiled “safe harbor” policy that would provide a get-out-of-jail-free card for mergers involving corporate white-collar criminals.
- In August 2022, Senators Warren and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) sent a letter to Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General Monaco urging DOJ to use its authority to ban corporations that commit misconduct from government contracting.
- In May 2019, Senator Warren and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) released a new report: Rigged Justice 2.0: Government of the Billionaires, by the Billionaires, and for the Billionaires. The report is the second in a series on the failure of the federal government to hold corporate and white-collar criminals accountable and highlights how enforcement hit a 20-year low under the Trump administration.
- In April 2019, Senator Warren introduced the Corporate Executive Accountability Act, which holds executives of large corporations criminally responsible when their companies commit crimes, harm large numbers of Americans through civil violations, or repeatedly violate federal law.
- In March 2018, Senator Warren introduced the Ending Too Big to Jail Act to hold big bank executives accountable when the banks they lead break the law.
- In January 2016, Senator Warren released a report: Rigged Justice: How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy. The report highlights 20 of the most egregious civil and criminal cases during the past year in which federal settlements failed to require meaningful accountability to deter future wrongdoing and to protect taxpayers and families.
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