The former Chief Compliance Officer of MoneyGram International, Inc. reached a settlement Thursday with FinCEN and the DOJ after he was held personally responsible for his company’s anti-money laundering failures.
Thomas E. Haider agreed to pay a $250,000 penalty and be barred from working as a compliance officer for any money transmitter for three years.
The settlement ended the DOJ’s action against Haider to enforce a $1 million fine that FinCEN imposed against him in December 2014.
FinCEN said then that Haider failed to ensure that MoneyGram complied with the anti-money laundering provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act.
Failed to perform adequate due diligence
Haider didn’t file suspicious activity reports on agents he knew or suspected were engaged in fraud, money laundering, or other criminal activity, FinCEN said. And he failed to perform adequate due diligence or audits or terminate known high-risk agents.
His lawyers argued that the Bank Secrecy Act didn’t allow individuals to be held responsible for corporate AML failures. They also said FinCEN’s actions violated Haider’s due process rights.
But federal judge David Doty cited language in the Bank Secrecy Act allowing penalties against a “partner, director, officer, or employee.”
