ING Groep NV agreed to pay $619 million to settle U.S. charges it falsified financial records to bypass sanctions on countries including Cuba and Iran, the largest such penalty against a bank.

ING Bank, a unit of Amsterdam-based ING Groep, admitted it moved billions of dollars through the financial system on behalf of Cuban and Iranian clients, violating U.S. sanctions by concealing the nature of the transactions and deceiving U.S. banks into processing illegal wire payments, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

The penalty is the largest against a bank in connection with U.S. sanctions violations, surpassing the $536 million paid by Zurich-based Credit Suisse AG in 2009 to settle similar violations, U.S. and New York officials said.

The ING agreement is part of a four-year investigation of "stripping," in which codes indicating the source of wire transfers are removed. Vance said his office has secured $1.8 billion in settlements since 2009. London-based Lloyds Banking Group Plc paid $350 million and Barclays Plc paid $298 million in agreements reached earlier in the probe into 10 banks that was begun by former District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.