Banamex USA (BUSA), an affiliate of Citigroup, has agreed to pay $97.4m to settle allegations of money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) violations.

In its agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), BUSA admitted to ‘criminal violations’ by ‘willfully failing’ to implement a proper anti-money laundering (AML) programme and file suspicious activity reports (SARs).

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The regulator alleged that between 2010 and 2012, BUSA produced more than 18,000 alerts of suspicious remittance transactions involving over $142m among the 30 million remittances it processed in Mexico. However, the bank was found to carry out less than 10 investigations and file only nine SARs based on these alerts.

BUSA also admitted that it failed to improve its monitoring of suspicious remittances even after recognising the need to do so.

The Justice Department signed a non-prosecution agreement with BUSA in the matter, due to the bank’s cooperative attitude.

In a statement, Citigroup said: “We are pleased to resolve these matters which conclude all remaining open inquiries conducted jointly by the DOJ and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts concerning the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance conduct of Citigroup and related entities, including BUSA.

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“The settlement includes a non-prosecution agreement and a Forfeiture Amount of roughly $97m, for which Citi is fully reserved.”

The latest deal follows a $140m settlement by Citigroup with the Federal Deposit Insurance and the California Department of Business Oversight in 2015 for weaknesses in its anti-money laundering programs. Following that settlement, Citigroup decided to shut the unit, which is expected to happen by 30 June 2017.