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.
A $120 million upgrade to the U.S. Treasury Department's database of Bank Secrecy Act reports is roughly 50 percent complete, after the bureau overseeing the project finished work on its new search engine.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit had one overriding objective: to better share its cache of Bank Secrecy Act data with investigators.
Possible budget cuts for the U.S. financial intelligence unit are spurring concerns that the bureau may curtail its funding of the Internal Revenue Service's anti-money laundering examinations, say current and former federal officials.
Planned budget cuts that would limit cooperation between regional investigators and the U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit would be nixed under the latest congressional appropriations bill.
A proposed funding cut that would restrict some governmental access to a U.S. Bank Secrecy Act database could also make it harder for state examiners to vet banks and money services businesses, say critics of the plan.