News
FinCEN to Finesse Plan on Cross-Border Transfer Reporting
By Brian Orsak and Kira Zalan
printThe U.S. Treasury Department will soon tweak a regulatory proposal that would require financial institutions to report wire transfers to and from the United States, an official said Monday. Under the September 2010 plan, banks would have to report all cross-border wires and money remitters report international transfers of $1,000 or more when the institutions are the first to receive them or last to process them within the country. U.S. regulations currently require banks to retain records of, but not report, international wires of $3,000 or more. The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has since drafted an amendment...
TO READ THE FULL STORY
Related News
House lawmakers are asking the nation's financial intelligence unit to reform how it screens job applicants following reports that the bureau's recent hiring campaign may have violated federal standards.
Efforts to ramp up the U.S. financial intelligence unit's enforcement of the Bank Secrecy Act have run into a longstanding hurdle: the bureau's reliance on financial regulators for case leads.
A decision by the U.S. Treasury to reshape the nation's financial intelligence unit has spurred serious concerns about the direction of the agency.
The nation's financial intelligence unit will weigh whether additional guidance is needed on how banks should treat clients tangentially or directly associated with state-sanctioned marijuana dispensaries, according to sources.
When FinCEN restructured its reporting hierarchy, the bureau signaled a subtle but important shift for banks: some of the energy it had once spent toward improving compliance would now serve to penalize regulatory violators, says former Assistant Director for the Office of Compliance Tom Fleming.
Leaders of the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control sharply criticized the head of the nation's financial intelligence unit for issuing guidance on how banks can treat marijuana dispensaries.
The U.S. Treasury Department is readying a program to share intelligence from law enforcement agencies with the banks charged with identifying suspicious transactions, an official said Thursday.
Regulatory pressure and a pending Treasury Department proposal that would require greater reporting of cross-border transfers have prompted some banks to drop the accounts of embassy and foreign mission clients.
A U.S. Treasury Department plan to increase reporting on cross-border transactions would allow federal regulators and investigators to more easily detect unregistered money remitters - if they can sift through the data.
Banks will be required to report all cross-border fund transmittal orders to the U.S. Treasury Department within five days, under the terms of proposed regulation released Monday. Under the proposal, money service business must report transactions of $1,000 or more.