News
Reorganization Underway, FinCEN Plans to Get Tough on Enforcement
By Brian Monroe
printFour months into the tenure of its new director, the nation's financial intelligence unit is positioning itself to more aggressively enforce anti-money laundering regulations and closely work with law enforcement officials. The changes, including the appointment of former federal prosecutors to top positions, reflect a quiet reorganization of the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) following the September appointment of Jennifer Shasky Calvery, then head of the U.S. Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section (AFMLS), as bureau director. The overhaul comes in response to a feeling among top Treasury Department officials that, in recent years, FinCEN...
TO READ THE FULL STORY
Related News
Dozens of officials in the U.S. financial intelligence unit may be resigning this month as part of the bureau's plan to remodel itself.
Efforts to ramp up the U.S. financial intelligence unit's enforcement of the Bank Secrecy Act have run into a longstanding hurdle: the bureau's reliance on financial regulators for case leads.
When FinCEN restructured its reporting hierarchy, the bureau signaled a subtle but important shift for banks: some of the energy it had once spent toward improving compliance would now serve to penalize regulatory violators, says former Assistant Director for the Office of Compliance Tom Fleming.
The U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit is considering invoking for the first time a Bank Secrecy Act power to obtain data on foreign banks, say multiple sources.
The nation's primary financial intelligence unit has been structurally reorganized to better integrate how the bureau analyzes and shares data on money laundering and other crimes, its director said Monday.
The U.S. government's financial intelligence unit will resume an abandoned practice of fining banks for Bank Secrecy Act violations apart from the enforcement actions it works on with federal regulators, say sources.
The director of the U.S. financial intelligence unit and prominent Bank Secrecy Act officers have formed a group to discuss whether efforts to combat money laundering at times miss their mark.
The U.S. Justice Department's top anti-money laundering enforcer will lead the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network beginning next month, the bureau said Monday.
A Tennessee bank must improve the way it exempts customers from anti-money laundering reporting requirements and enlist the aid of independent consultants "to shore up deficiencies in compliance training, customer risk assessments and independent testing," according to a regulatory order.
The number of federal enforcement actions against financial institutions over poor anti-money laundering compliance programs fell by over 16 percent in 2008 from the previous year, according to Fortent Inform data.
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued enforcement actions requiring that two banks in Texas and California improve their Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions compliance programs.
While regulators don't have to make concession to an institution facing an enforcement action, there is usually room to negotiate the terms of penalties, lawyers say.