News
Jurisdictions Must Relax Privacy Rules on Intra-bank Data Sharing, Says Egmont Group
By Colby Adams
printCountries should ease their privacy restrictions that hinder cross-border data-sharing on suspicious transactions, according to a Toronto-based intergovernmental group of financial intelligence units. Approximately 60 percent of countries don't allow a financial institution to share suspicious transaction reports (STRs) with its foreign branches, the Egmont Group said in a 52-page white paper published Friday. The privacy and data protection restrictions stymie anti-money laundering efforts, the organization said. In such jurisdictions, "it is not always clear whether domestic legislation was purposefully constructed to prohibit sharing, or whether the prohibition is an unintended consequence of the wording of the legislation," the group...
TO READ THE FULL STORY
Related News
Several of the world's largest financial institutions are years into the process of rethinking and updating how they share the personal information of their customers across borders to thwart illicit finance.
With new international data-exchange agreements in place, the United Kingdom will soon have greater access than ever to information on tax dodgers with offshore accounts, according to the nation's Financial Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke.
As the European Union weighs a new raft of data protection standards, some bankers believe that they can't meet both anti-money laundering demands and Europe's privacy expectations, according to an academic.
An expected strengthening of data privacy standards in Europe and elsewhere could hinder efforts by multinational banks to share information on suspicious clients with their foreign affiliates, say current and former U.S. officials.
The U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit fined a now-defunct New Jersey money transmitter $125,000 for repeatedly and willfully violating Bank Secrecy Act requirements.
Mexican officials will extend until February an upcoming deadline for nonbank companies to implement anti-money laundering controls, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.
Lawmakers should expand financial safe harbor protections to allow banks to better share their suspicions about money laundering and its predicate crimes, a top U.S. regulatory official said Sunday.
The EU is pushing the United States for answers following reports that the National Security Agency siphoned bank messaging data held in the European Union, possibly in violation of a July 2010 treaty.
Defense attorneys are hoping to overturn convictions against their clients in dozens of money laundering, drug and other cases that they say may have been based on undisclosed national security data.
The top European Union official for civil rights said Wednesday that the U.S. Justice Department has yet to answer all of her concerns about a controversial American surveillance program.
Ongoing negotiations between the United States and European Union on a broad data-sharing arrangement will likely be complicated following the leaked disclosure this month of a transnational American surveillance program.
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.
The New York County District Attorney's Office is creating a financial intelligence unit in an effort to expand its use of Bank Secrecy Act reports, the agency's highest official said Monday.
The U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Board disclosed long-awaited enforcement actions against JPMorgan Chase for Bank Secrecy Act failures Monday - the same day the regulators punished the company for trading violations.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has opened dozens of financial crime investigations since the 2010 formation an internal team that reviews suspicious activity reports, a New York official said Monday.
It's a message that has been hammered home repeatedly by the U.S. Treasury Department: the confidentiality of data included in suspicious activity reports is sacrosanct.
Divergences in international lists of predicate offenses to money laundering have hampered the fight against financial criminals, according to a report by the Australian government.
An international anti-money laundering watchdog group is likely to face resistance to plans to loosen stringent privacy laws on bank data, say analysts.
Financial institutions must keep a tight lid on investigations of suspicious account activity, even when transactional alerts don't merit federal regulatory reporting, the U.S. Treasury Department said Tuesday.
A Florida judge will rule Tuesday whether attorneys can discuss the possible filing of a suspicious activity report that allegedly triggered a wrongful termination lawsuit against a Miami community bank.