The Bank of Boston denied that it has a crime link.

Calling their failure to report $1.22 billion in overseas currency transactions “a simple mistake,” First National Bank of Boston officials vehemently denied that the transactions were linked to organized crime. In a Monday story, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors were alerted to the bank’s unreported transactions during a criminal investigation into cashier’s checks purchased by members of a reputed organized crime family in Boston. The newspaper said an affidavit filed in federal court in Boston in September, 1983, in connection with a racketeering and loan sharking indictment filed against five members of the Angiulo family of Boston, said the Angiulos frequently used the Bank of Boston to dispose of cash. But bank officials said the transactions that led to the institution’s guilty plea concerned money originating at European banks and that Bank of Boston officials had no way of knowing the source of that money.