American Express has been ordered to pay a $350m penalty by US regulators after its AML safeguards allowed roughly $13bn in suspected illicit activity to go insufficiently monitored and reported for almost 11 years.
According to Yahoo Finance, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) concluded that American Express National Bank lacked the controls needed to spot and flag suspicious transactions, including possible criminal use of its credit and charge cards.
According to the OCC’s order, the bank handled billions in suspected trade-based money laundering between June 2014 and May 2025, covering questionable card charges and repayments. Some of this activity was linked to accounts connected with bank insiders, although the regulator did not name those individuals or describe their positions.
The OCC identified systemic shortcomings across transaction monitoring, customer identification and internal controls, which meant the full extent of suspicious behaviour never reached law enforcement.
Regulators said the bank’s risk assessments concentrated heavily on its comparatively small deposit-taking operations while underestimating exposure in its far larger card businesses. Thin staffing, limited expertise, poor employee training and flawed internal audits also allowed the problems to continue unchecked.
Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said these lapses stopped the bank from passing critical information to law enforcement.
Under the enforcement action, the firm must rebuild its AML framework, tighten surveillance of suspicious transactions and reinforce oversight of potential insider misconduct. It accepted the OCC’s orders without admitting or denying the findings. The Federal Reserve has separately issued a cease-and-desist order against the company.
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