News
FinCEN to Detail BSA Database Overhaul in January
By Colby Adams
printThe U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit will unveil details in January of its Bank Secrecy Act database overhaul scheduled for completion in 2014. The department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, is currently "working on the foundation and the design phase" of the project, according to Steve Hudak, a spokesman for the bureau. The overhaul is intended to help streamline regulatory filing and information dissemination, according to Treasury Department budgetary documents. The revamped database will include a new user interface for the over 300 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that search for regulatory reports on suspicious financial...
TO READ THE FULL STORY
Subscribe
Learn More
Related News
Italian prosecutors seize $10.5 billion from one of Europe's wealthiest families, a judge questions HSBC's agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, and more, in this week's news roundup.
The U.S. Treasury Department is nearing completion of a plan to use predictive analytics software to analyze regulatory data and identify possible financial crimes, an official said Tuesday.
Upgrades to the U.S. Treasury Department's Bank Secrecy Act database will allow the nation's financial intelligence unit to better identify criminal activity indicated in regulatory reports, a governmental auditor said.
Poor anti-money laundering controls on affiliates and problematic oversight allowed a global bank to process tens of trillions of dollars with little to no compliance checks, according to a U.S. Senate subcommittee.
An anti-fraud company backed by several large American financial institutions is asking the U.S. Treasury Department whether it is legally protected to manage a shared database on suspected money launderers.
An effort by the country's financial intelligence unit to take ownership of Bank Secrecy Act data managed by the IRS appears to be on track, according to industry observers and the U.S. Treasury Department.
The U.S. Treasury Department should alter or abandon its plan to collect data on cross-border transactions made through banks and money remitters, in part because of potential data management issues, say banking groups.
A U.S. Treasury Department proposal to amend suspicious activity reporting forms could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in one-off expenses for some financial institutions, even as the plan streamlines report filing.
Banks will receive fewer law enforcement data requests during the early stages of financial crime investigations as the result of new rules on cross-border transaction reporting, according to the head of the U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit.
The United Kingdom's chief financial regulator fined Royal Bank of Scotland nearly USD $9 million on Tuesday, the agency's largest penalty ever for anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance failures.
The U.S. Treasury Department penalizes a New York bank for transactions tied to Cuba, Italy arrests 300 in a mafia crackdown and the Asia Pacific Money Laundering Group warns of laundering through carbon emissions schemes, in this week's news roundup.
Efforts by the U.S. Treasury Department to get small banks to file their Bank Secrecy Act documents electronically are likely to face stiff resistance despite law enforcement complaints, say consultants.
Banks are revamping their financial intelligence units to tackle not only money laundering but other crimes, including fraud, as part of an effort to rein in expenses, say compliance professionals.
The U.S. Treasury Department wrote off $3.2 million in 2008 from a failed Bank Secrecy Act data mining program, bringing the losses associated with the project to at least $15.4 million.
A proposed U.S. Treasury Department database that would track cross-border funds transfers is too costly and may be harmful to the U.S. payments system, say three banking industry trade groups.
President Bush's proposed budget increase for the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is meant in part to help fund its Bank Secrecy Act E-Filing and Cross-Border Wire Transfer initiatives.
After spending two years and more than $14 million developing the information retrieval system expected to be the crown jewel of the FinCEN's much-hyped BSA Direct program, the agency on announced that the project would be cancelled.
In one of his first public acts since taking over as director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Robert W. Werner ordered FinCEN personnel and outside contractors to temporarily stop working on the agencys highly-touted BSA Direct sys