JPMorgan Chase & Co. is headquartered in New York and is one of the world’s largest banking and financial-services groups.
JP Morgan's Anti-Money Laundering (AML) - related record involves two distinct cases worth separating clearly.
The Madoff case
In January 2014, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) fined JPMorgan Chase Bank US$461 million for wilfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to report suspicious transactions tied to Bernard Madoff's multi-decade investment fraud - one of the largest financial frauds in US history, run through accounts at JPMorgan for years. JPMorgan admitted the underlying facts as part of the settlement.
Separate criminal conduct: market manipulation
In September 2020, JPMorgan Chase & Co. entered a three-year Deferred Prosecution Agreement over schemes to defraud in the precious-metals and US Treasury markets. The bank admitted wire-fraud conduct and agreed to pay approximately US$920.2 million in criminal penalties, disgorgement, and victim compensation.
Combined
Across these two cases alone, JPMorgan's admitted penalties total roughly US$1.4 billion.
Still operating
Despite admitted Bank Secrecy Act violations connected to the largest Ponzi scheme in US history, and a separate criminal admission of wire fraud in its trading business, JPMorgan continued operating as the largest bank in the United States throughout both cases.
The comparison with BCCI
JPMorgan's failure to flag one of history's most notorious frauds - happening on its own books - and a separate admitted criminal fraud scheme in its trading operations were both treated as failures of specific systems and specific businesses, not as evidence that the whole institution was rotten. BCCI faced the opposite treatment: misconduct tied to specific executives, accounts, and transactions was generalised into a "criminal culture" covering the entire worldwide bank.
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