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Judge Again Blocks Treasury’s FBME Money-Laundering Designation

By Valentina Pasquali

A federal court stalled the U.S. financial intelligence unit's second attempt to blacklist a Tanzanian bank under the Patriot Act and ordered the bureau to submit a full explanation of the process that led to its determination. The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) failed to provide FBME Bank, which operates largely out of Cyprus, with sufficient information about how it used suspicious activity reports to designate the lender a "primary money laundering concern" and bar it from the U.S. financial system, D.C. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper ruled. However, Cooper called FinCEN's errors "harmless" and stayed rather...

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