A U.S. Treasury Department effort to better ensure the confidentiality of suspicious activity reports contributed to a delay in regulatory penalties by the nation's non-governmental regulator of brokerage firms.
In violation of federal law, the confidentiality of suspicious activity reports is being breached regularly by some securities firms, a securities markets regulator said Friday.
U.S. broker-dealers are bracing for the July enforcement deadlines of two sets of federal rules that will broadly expand their know-your-customer duties, at times ambiguously, say analysts.
Some firms under the purview of the nation's largest independent securities regulator are failing to meet anti-money laundering compliance standards despite spending enough money to do so, according to an agency regulator.
The largest non-governmental regulator of U.S. securities firms expelled a Southfield, MI, retail foreign currency broker and permanently barred its chief compliance officer for repeated rule violations, including anti-money laundering, accounting and capital requirements failures.
Penalties issued by the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency for anti-money laundering violations are on course to outnumber similar fines levied by the self-regulatory organization in 2008, according to agency data.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined a Michigan brokerage firm $225,000 for securities violations and poor anti-money laundering controls, the second such enforcement action against a broker this year.
E*Trade has been fined $1 million by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for inadequate anti-money laundering policies and procedures. The action follows on a $1 million penalty levied by the Securities and Exchange Commission six months ago against the on-line brokerage.