Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fines have been paid by the four biggest banks in the US as JPMorgan’s chief executive sounds off against digital assets, saying they are for criminals.
According to the corporate misconduct data aggregator Violation Tracker – Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and JPMorgan have now collectively paid a staggering $181 billion in penalties since the year 2000.
The Violation Tracker covers a range of civil and criminal banking offenses committed by banks, including foreign bribery, money laundering, corporate tax evasion, securities violations, accounting fraud, price-fixing, employment discrimination and more.
The data shows Bank of America has paid total of 324 fines worth $87.2 billion since the start of the millennium while Wells Fargo has been fined 261 times for a total of $27.5 billion.
Violation Tracker shows Citigroup was found to be in violation 181 times, paying $26.9 billion worth of fines while JPMorgan has been hit with a total of 272 fines worth $39.3 billion.
The new numbers come as JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon tells Congress during a recent meeting that crypto assets are tools for bad actors that he would shut down if he could.
As stated by Dimon,
“I’ve always been deeply opposed to crypto. Bitcoin, etc. You pointed out the only true use case for it is criminals – drug traffickers, money laundering, tax avoidance, and that is a use case because it is somewhat anonymous, not fully, and because you can move money instantaneously.
And because it doesn’t go all these systems [that] have built up over many years – know your customer (KYC), sanctions, OFAC (Office of Foreign Asset Control) – they can bypass all of that. If I was the government, I’d close it down.”
Dimon did not provide evidence for his claims that crypto assets are widely used for criminal activity.
Last year, the crypto research firm Chainalysis determined that while 5% of the global gross domestic product is laundered every year in fiat currency, just 0.05% of all crypto transactions involve money laundering.
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