Calif. Bank Loses Court Bid to Escape FDIC Bank Secrecy Order

A federal appellate court March 12 upheld an enforcement order against California Pacific Bank over alleged compliance failures with a key anti-money laundering law.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the San Francisco bank’s bid to lift a cease-and-desist order that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. applied in 2016 over the bank’s alleged failures in setting up an adequate Bank Secrecy Act compliance program.

California Pacific Bank argued that the standards for complying with the 1970 law were too vague and that the FDIC’s examiners were biased in their review of California ...