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.
New U.S. Treasury Department banking restrictions designed to hamstring Iran's nuclear program will curtail personal remittances and the ability to receive payments for licensed exports to the country, say analysts.
A federal court ruling reversing convictions against a former financial adviser for running an unlicensed money remitter that accepted money from Iran highlights little known exceptions to prohibitions on accepting Iranian money.
Last year's failed Times Square car bombing has been the chief impetus behind a recent U.S. Treasury Department's initiative to identify unregistered money services businesses and hawala networks, according to sources.
Crackdowns on currency exchange and bond swap businesses in Mexico and Venezuela are prompting some U.S. banks to turn away secondary market businesses in Latin America even when they operate legitimately, say consultants.
Bank of America failed to investigate $160 billion in suspicious transactions used to perpetrate an alleged $20 billion fraud by a wealthy Saudi Arabian businessman, a congressional witness said Tuesday.
A Manhattan court Wednesday indicted a New York man for allegedly transferring money illegally to Faisal Shahzad, the 31-year-old man who attempted to detonate a homemade bomb in Times Square.
Three weeks before he attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square on May 1, Faisal Shazhad, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Connecticut, was in New York picking up $7,000 in cash sent by a suspected member of a Pakistani terrorist group using an age-old informal transmission network.
Venezuela announces plans to create a public bond market, 14 individuals charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization, in this week's roundup.
Venezuela's takeover of at least 30 bond brokerages on money laundering charges will do little to stem the tide of illicit proceeds flowing into the country, say analysts.
The U.S. Supreme Court okays the extradition of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and a prominent Florida lawyer pleads guilty to bilking investors out of $1.2 billion in a massive Ponzi scheme, in this week's news roundup.
Federal prosecutors indicted three New York men Wednesday for allegedly helping send approximately $300,000 to Iran and other countries through unregistered hawalas, a type of informal money exchange network.
Federal investigators Thursday arrested a former consultant of a prominent New York management company for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions against Iran through the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business.
As the nexus between terrorist financing and drug trafficking widens, financial institutions will have to more closely scrutinize their correspondent banking relationships, say consultants.
Knowing and adhering to federal prosecution guidelines and giving "unfettered cooperation" to the U.S. Justice Department in criminal investigations are a bank's best defenses against indictment and can help secure a less painful deferred prosecution agreement.
The men operating two money services businesses illegally transferred about $4 million in government money they believed to be the proceeds of smuggled drugs and cigarettes, and in one case, funding for the terrorist group al Qaeda, according to the indictments.
U.S. Army Major John Cockerham made a lot of money selling his influence as a contracting officer to guarantee contractors would win government bids, according to federal investigators. But he was tripped up by his efforts to launder $9.6 million in bribes, authorities say.
An Internet pharmacy racketeering operation that generated more than $126 million illustrates how accounting firms and other so-called gatekeepers can help money launderers, banking compliance professionals say.
But the bad news continued this week for the company as its American Express Bank Ltd. unit reached an agreement on Tuesday with the New York State Banking Department to improve its AML regime.
The U.S. Justice Department is seeking the forfeiture of $110 million in proceeds from an allegedly corrupt Italian bankruptcy case.