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Federal law enforcement agencies will ask multiple financial institutions next week to take part in a pilot program intended to improve how banks identify suspicious clients and communicate with investigators.
The Obama administration is pushing lawmakers to introduce legislation that would require corporations to obtain tax identification data that could be turned over to investigators.
As a deadline for the implementation of electronic Bank Secrecy Act reporting approached earlier this month, hundreds of financial institutions questioned whether they had too little time to comply with the requirements.
Hundreds of banks and credit unions are likely to miss a June deadline to comply with federal rules mandating that they file all anti-money laundering regulatory reports electronically.
A federal court fined a north New Jersey bank $5 million Monday for willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act in an attempt to disguise $35 million in suspicious transactions, including $5 million in structured deposits.
The United Kingdom's chief financial regulator Tuesday fined Barclays PLC more than $4 million for "serious weaknesses" in its securities transaction monitoring reporting, the largest penalty issued by the agency for such problems.
The U.S. Treasury Department finalized rules Thursday, lightening the requirements for financial institutions to report transactions above $10,000 on certain customers.
The country's largest banking association proposed a sweeping overhaul of U.S. anti-money laundering enforcement that would create a governmental entity responsible for overseeing Bank Secrecy Act compliance.
A Nov. 1 deadline imposed by the Bush administration for finalizing federal regulations could effectively kill a FinCEN proposal that would reduce the currency transaction reporting burden on financial institutions.
The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has proposed amending Bank Secrecy Act regulations to reduce the paperwork banks do to exempt certain customer transactions from currency transaction reporting rules.
The Government Accountability Office, in a report issued Thursday, said financial institutions shy away from seeking exemptions that would reduce the number of CTRs they must file every year because the rules are unnecessarily complicated and they fear regulatory reprisals.
In a study expected to be issued Feb. 21, the Government Accountability Office is expected to conclude that CTRs filed by financial institutions provide essential information for law enforcement investigations, delivering a blow to industry calls for reporting relief.
U.S. regulators acknowledged the outcry from the financial industry for Bank Secrecy Act reporting relief but said they would not take any action until a government effectiveness study is released early next year, according to a congressional report released Thursday.
A bill that would reduce the number of Bank Secrecy Act related reports financial institutions must file won't become law because of opposition from law enforcement and a backlog of higher-priority bills on Capitol Hill, banking compliance experts say.
Leaders of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee have requested a study of the effectiveness of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing reporting requirements and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's efficiency in administering them.
U.S. banks with more than $20 billion in assets are assigning an average 33 employees to fulfill their Bank Secrecy Act compliance obligations, according a survey released Sunday at the American Bankers Association Regulatory Compliance Conference in Atlanta.
United Roosevelt Savings Bank and Eurobank, in cease and desist orders issued Tuesday, were instructed to look for transactions that should have triggered currency transaction reports or suspicious activity reports. Both were cited for other deficiencies in their anti-money laundering programs.
Financial services professionals on Thursday called on lawmakers to reform Bank Secrecy Act rules, which they say overburden their organizations, regulators and law enforcement with marginally useful anti-money laundering related reports.
FinCEN has proposed a revised Designation of an Exempt Person form (TD F 90-22.53), which banks must file when they exempt certain customers from currency transaction reporting requirements.
Still overwhelmed by useless CTRs, U.S. FinCEN issues tepid report to Congress on reasons, solutions
Even though banks have had the right to "exempt" certain transactions, millions of CTRs the government considers useless continue to be filed and stored in massive government supercomputers in Detroit.
