CORRECTION AND UPDATE APPENDED: Federal authorities believe Puerto Rico is a weak link in the U.S. anti-money laundering regime and may consider punitive actions against one or two financial institutions found to have lax compliance programs, a senior FBI official said. Funds transfers from the U.S. commonwealth to the continental United States often do not trigger the same level of due diligence as those from other Caribbean and Latin American jurisdictions, making it an ideal "first hop" for money launderers, drug traffickers and other criminals to place illicit proceeds into the U.S. financial system, according to Doug Leff, special agent...
Federal regulators said Tuesday that they had fined a Puerto Rican bank $25,000 for Bank Secrecy Act violations eight days before the company went into receivership with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
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