TD Bank hopes to soon reach ‘global resolution’ of drug-money probes

financialpost.com:

Toronto-Dominion Bank is hoping it can soon work out a “global resolution” to a series of regulatory and law-enforcement probes it faces in the U.S. over allegations that the lender was used for the laundering of drug money.

Chief executive Bharat Masrani addressed employees of the bank in a series of communications on Monday and in a video town-hall meeting with about 1,800 top leaders, during which he warned that “this is going to get tough before it gets better.”

“I’m hoping that we can resolve this as soon as possible. We’re looking at a global resolution,” he said, according to a transcript of the meeting seen by Bloomberg News. “But in the meantime, it is critical that we hold our heads high.”

Toronto-Dominion is facing probes by three different regulators as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, which is investigating the bank over its ties to a US$653 million drug-money-laundering case in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg last week. That probe is focused on how Chinese crime groups used Toronto-Dominion and other banks to hide money from U.S. fentanyl sales, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

That’s in addition to another case in which an employees at one of the bank’s New Jersey branches was charged with accepting bribes to facilitate the laundering of drug money.

“We’ve been working with the U.S. Department of Justice investigators for some time now,” Masrani told employees. “I should say our system did pick up a lot of this activity but not enough and we were just too slow.”

Information the bank has provided to law enforcement “has helped, not only apprehend these criminals, but to actually get them in front of a court and be prosecuted,” he