Raymond James fined $17M for anti-money laundering failures

ST. PETERSBURG — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) fined two Raymond James companies a total of $17 million for “widespread failures related to the firms' anti-money laundering programs," a statement says.

Raymond James & Associates Inc. was fined $8 million and Raymond James Financial Services Inc. received a $9 million fine, the statement says. Linda Busby, RJA's former anti-money laundering compliance officer, was fined $25,000 and suspended for three months.

According to FINRA, the companies failed “to establish and implement adequate AML procedures, which resulted in the firms' failure to properly prevent, detect, investigate and report suspicious activity for several years.”

“Raymond James had significant systematic AML failures over an extended period of time, made even more egregious by the fact the firm was previously sanctioned in this area,” says Brad Bennett, FINRA's executive vice president and chief of enforcement, in the statement. “The monitoring for suspicious transactions is an essential part of protecting our financial system and firms must allocate adequate resources to their AML compliance efforts.”

Neither St. Petersburg-based Raymond James nor Busby admitted or denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA's findings, the statement says.