The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) said this week that it has fined Sonenshine & Company LLC $20,000 and issued a censure following multiple violations of anti-money laundering (AML) rules between 2017 and 2023.
FINRA Fines Sonenshine & Company LLC
According to a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver, and Consent (AWC) published by the regulator, the New York-based investment banking firm failed to establish and implement policies and internal controls reasonably designed to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act.
Notably, FINRA says the firm did not respond in a timely manner to Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) requests in 2021 and failed to conduct required annual independent AML testing in 2020 and 2022.
FINRA explained that Sonenshine was warned as early as 2017 about deficiencies in its AML programme.
However, they said that despite this, the firm’s procedures lacked guidance on how to search records in response to FinCEN requests and failed to establish a supervisory process to ensure compliance.
The regulator added that it found that the firm’s AML procedures only required biennial testing until December 2023, even though it was obligated to conduct such testing annually.
Sonenshine previously faced a $15,000 fine in 2011 for similar AML-related violations.
As part of the settlement, Sonenshine must certify within 60 days that it has remediated the issues and implemented a compliant AML programme. The firm neither admitted nor denied the findings but consented to the sanctions.
