Jerome Favre / Bloomberg / Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $1.7 billion to the victims of Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme.

Authorities said the banking giant admitted in a settlement unveiled Tuesday that it didn’t have an effective money-laundering program and didn’t file a suspicious activity report on Madoff’s activities, the Wall Street Journal reports. The settlement delays criminal charges against the bank for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act for two years, pending payments to victims and reforms of JPMorgan’s anti-money-laundering policies. The $1.7 billion payment is the largest ever as a result of a Bank Secrecy Act violation, which requires banks to file a report if they detect suspected violations of federal law.

The bank will pay an additional $350 million penalty to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the currency, and $543 million in private litigation to settle a class action suit and a U.S. bankruptcy trustee’s suit, bringing the bank’s total payoff to resolve its involvement with Madoff to $2.6 billion, Reuters reports.

A rash of federal investigations over JP Morgan’s activities surrounding the financial crisis, including its holding of mortgage bonds its hiring practices in China and alleged manipulation of the Libor benchmark interest rate has so far brought the bank’s settlements to some $20 billion in the last 12 months.

[WSJ]

[Reuters]