On May 23, the federal court of appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected an appeal by the majority shareholders in Banca Privada d’Andorra S.A. (“BPA”) regarding claims that FinCEN violated the Administrative Procedure Act when issuing a March 2015 Notice of Finding that the Andorran bank was a financial institution “of primary money laundering concern” and a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to impose a special measure pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, effectively cutting off the bank’s access to the U.S. financial system.
Specifically, FinCEN had imposed against BPA the fifth and most severe special measure under Section 311, which prohibits a foreign financial institution from opening or maintaining in the United States through a domestic financial institution a correspondent account or payable-through account. See 31 U.S.C. § 5318A(b)(5). We previously have blogged about FinCEN’s ability to impose the fifth special measure against foreign financial institutions, which the D.C. Circuit court aptly described in the BPA matter as a possible “death sentence” for smaller foreign banks which rely on access to correspondent accounts in the United States for U.S. dollar clearing.
The appellants had sought two principal claims for relief: (1) an order requiring FinCEN to withdraw the Notices; and (2) a declaration that the Notices were unlawfully issued. The D.C. Circuit affirmed the judgment of the district court dismissing the appellants’ first claim for relief on mootness grounds because FinCEN, once “satisfied that the Bank no longer posed a money laundering concern,” withdrew both Notices after the Andorran government seized BPA and transferred its assets to a bridge bank. However, the appellate court deviated from the analysis of the district court with respect to the second claim for relief by finding that this claim should be dismissed not for mootness, but for lack of standing because the appellants had failed to show that a judicial order would redress effectively their alleged injuries.
The appellants argued that a decision holding that the two Notices were unlawful would redress their injuries because “there is a substantial likelihood that a decision finding that FinCEN improperly labeled [the bank] as of ‘primary money laundering concern’ would materially impact the position of Andorran authorities as to the proper course to be followed with respect to the sale of [the bank’s] assets, what should be done with the corporate structure and any assets that remain, and how the majority shareholders, as [the bank’s] owners, should now be treated in the process.” The D.C. Circuit disagreed, reasoning that even if the appellants had shown injury and causation to support standing, the appellants nonetheless “offered no evidence that the Andorran Government would reverse course as a result of the withdrawal of FinCEN’s Notices” and so “have not shown that the sale actually could be undone even if the Andorran Government were so inclined.”
This case involves unusual facts and procedure and potentially represents a relatively unique holding. Having said that, the opinion more generally reflects how the government can put the “rabbit in the hat” in regards to standing to sue, or lack thereof: by issuing a “death sentence” under Section 311, FinCEN ultimately deprived the former bank’s majority shareholders of standing to sue over almost certain and severe injury caused by FinCEN – specifically because the death sentence was implemented with such relentless efficiency. Thus, harm and causation was so clear that, in effect, redress was impossible.
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