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U.S. officials may turn to a powerful but infrequently used forfeiture tool to penalize Chinese lenders that process funds on behalf of corrupt officials, sanctions evaders and intellectual property thieves, former federal attorneys told ACAMS moneylaundering.com. Under section 981(k) of the U.S. Patriot Act, U.S. prosecutors working to seize allegedly illicit proceeds in overseas banks can take an equivalent amount of funds from those lenders' U.S. correspondent accounts, even if they cannot show a "directly traceable" link between the two sets of assets. The statute could bolster the Justice Department's China Initiative, an ongoing campaign to investigate and prosecute overseas...