De-Risking

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The U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) issued a statement earlier this week regarding testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Committee on Financial Services regarding the potential perils of “derisking.”

As described by the GAO, “derisking is the practice of depository institutions limiting certain services or ending their relationships with customers to, among other things, avoid perceived regulatory concerns about facilitating money laundering or other criminal activity such as financing to terrorist groups.” Derisking is a significant ongoing issue in AML-related enforcement.  As we have blogged, the U.S. Treasury Department previously attempted to allay the fears driving the phenomenon of derisking by (i) suggesting that U.S. banks have overreacted to concerns over AML/BSA enforcement by unnecessarily terminating correspondent banking relationships with foreign banks; (ii) noting that these relationships are crucial to the global economy; and (iii) stating that reflexive derisking could destabilize or disrupt access to U.S. financing, hinder international trade, cross-border business, and charitable activities, and make claim remittances harder to effectuate.

It is difficult to distill clear and specific practical points from the recent GAO statement, entitled “Bank Secrecy Act – Further Actions Needed to Address Domestic and International Derisking Concerns” (“Derisking Statement”). This is partly because, during the course of listing various perceived concerns regarding the practice of derisking, the Derisking Statement merely comments somewhat vaguely that, “[w]ithout accessing the full range of BSA/AML factors that may be influencing banks to derisk or close branches, Treasury, the federal banking regulators, and Congress do not have the information needed to determine if BSA/AML regulations and their implementation can be made more effective or less burdensome.”

Bearing in mind the above limitations of the statement, the Derisking Statement summarizes itself as follows:

Why GAO Did This Study

In recent years, some Southwest border residents and businesses reported difficulty accessing banking services, including experiencing bank account terminations and bank branch closings in the region. In addition, the World Bank and others have reported that some money transmitters have been losing access to banking services with depository institutions.

This statement is based on findings from GAO’s February 2018 report on access to banking services along the Southwest border (GAO-18-263) and March 2018 report on the effects of derisking on remittance flows to fragile countries (GAO-18-313). GAO discusses (1) the extent to which banks are terminating accounts and closing branches in the Southwest border region, (2) the extent to which money transmitters serving selected fragile countries are facing banking access challenges, and (3) actions relevant U.S. agencies have taken to respond to these challenges. For those reports, GAO surveyed more than 400 banks, developed an econometric model on the drivers of branch closures, and conducted case studies on four countries to assess the effects of derisking on remittances flows.

What GAO Recommends

GAO made five recommendations in the two reports: to Treasury and the federal banking regulators to conduct a retrospective review of BSA/AML regulations and their implementation, and to Treasury to assess shifts in remittance flows to nonbanking channels. Banking regulators agreed with the recommendations. GAO requested comments from Treasury, but none were provided.

Ultimately, what is clear from the Derisking Statement is that the spectrum of financial services available to certain markets is shrinking due to concerns over AML/BSA enforcement, which the U.S. government somewhat perversely suggests are overblown.  What is not clear from the statement is whether U.S. regulators will tackle this issue, or how they should tackle this issue.

If you would like to remain updated on these issues, please click here to subscribe to Money Laundering Watch. To learn more about Ballard Spahr’s Anti-Money Laundering Team, please click here.

FinCEN recentlty announced entry of a $2 million assessment against Lone Star National Bank, a private bank operating out of Texas, for the bank’s allegedly willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) and inadequate Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) monitoring programs.  The primary violations relate to Lone Star’s alleged failure to comply with due diligence requirements imposed by Section 312 of the USA PATRIOT Act in establishing and conducting its correspondent banking relationship with a Mexican bank.  As a result of Lone Star’s insufficient due diligence and AML program, the Mexican bank was “allowed to move hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in suspicious cash shipments through the U.S. financial system in less than two years.”  The FinCEN’s announcement warns that this “action underscores the dangers that institutions face when taking on international correspondence activities without properly equipping themselves” to manage the enhanced obligations that arise with such relationships.

This new FinCEN assessment underscores the continued regulatory interest in the AML risks presented by correspondent banking relationships. We therefore first will provide a brief overview of correspondent banking relationships and the enhanced regulatory attention often paid to them. Armed with this context, we then will analyze the findings and lessons learned from the Lone Star assessment, including the value touted by FinCEN of Lone Star’s efforts to cooperate with its own investigation. Further, this new assessment suggests that the U.S. government does not always present a consistent voice regarding correspondent banking relationships: although the U.S. Treasury has tried to encourage financial institutions in general to not “de-risk” and thereby terminate correspondent banking relationships, we see that enforcement agencies continue to penalize institutions in individual cases for not mitigating sufficiently the risks of correspondent banking. Continue Reading FinCEN Fines Texas Bank $2M for Alleged Failure to Vet and Monitor Mexican Correspondent Banking Relationship – But Touts Bank’s Cooperation

Third in a Three-Part Series of Blog Posts

Many Keys to AML Information Sharing This blog focuses on suggested improvements to information sharing between financial institutions, and between financial institutions and governments, to better combat money laundering and terrorist financing. As we recently blogged, the Royal United Services Institute (“RUSI”) for Defence and Security Studies — a U.K. think tank – has released a study:  The Role of Financial Information-Sharing Partnerships in the Disruption of Crime (the “Study”).  The Study focuses on international efforts — including efforts by the United States — in reporting suspicious transactions revealing criminal activity such as money laundering and terrorist financing.  The Study critiques current approaches to Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) reporting and suggests improvements, primarily in the form of enhanced information sharing among financial institutions and governments. In our first blog post in this series, we described some of the criticisms set forth by the Study regarding the general effectiveness of current suspicious activity reporting.  These critiques related to an ever-increasing amount of SAR filings, coupled in part with a lack a feedback by governments to the filing institutions regarding what sort of information was considered by law enforcement to be actually useful.  In our second post, we discussed the current landscape of AML information sharing in the United States, which is governed by Section 314 of the Patriot Act, and is an important component of many financial institutions’ ability to fulfill successfully their AML obligations.  This third and final blog post pertaining to the Study examines its findings and proposals for developing effective public–private financial information sharing partnerships (“FISPs”) in order to better detect, prevent, and combat money laundering and terrorist financing.  Observing that modern financial crime “operates in real time, is most often international in scale and can be highly sophisticated ad adaptive to avoid detection,” the Study generally posits that AML systems ideally should include real-time and cross-border information sharing. Continue Reading Combatting Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Through Enhanced AML Information Sharing

Part Two of a Three-Part Series

In the second part of this series, we explore the practical effects of the FinCEN and DOJ guidance documents on industries attempting to serve marijuana related business (“MRBs”). On June 27, 2017, the Tenth Circuit issued an interesting and divided opinion showing us how difficult it can be to square the prohibitions in the federal Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”) and money laundering statutes with state legislation legalizing certain MRB activity and the seemingly permissive nature of the FinCEN and DOJ guidance documents. Continue Reading Continued and Unexpected Roadblocks to Serving the Marijuana Industry: Fourth Corner Credit Union v. Federal Reserve Bank

Part One of a Three-Part Series

We begin this week with a three-part series on banking and the marijuana industry. States continue to pass medical and recreational use marijuana legislation despite that the fact that the substance remains classified as a Schedule I drug subject to the federal Controlled Substances Act.  Thus, the medical and recreational marijuana industries continue to struggle with access to banking and credit, and those who attempt to serve these industries find themselves subject to the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) and the criminal money laundering provisions.  As we will detail this week, the struggle for financial institutions attempting to service the marijuana industry comes not only from the BSA and AML provisions, but in other forms.  We start this week with an overview of the guidance documents issued by the federal government which identify the enforcement priorities and also potential windows for financial institutions to service the marijuana industry.  We will follow up with a discussion of a recent federal court decision illustrating the practical difficulties of squaring the prohibitions of the federal drug laws with permissive state laws and the federal guidance documents.  We will conclude with an exploration of how federal agencies beyond the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), can further muddy these waters by staking out their own regulatory and enforcement priorities.  –Priya Roy Continue Reading Banking and the Marijuana Industry

The Philippines has been identified by the U.S. as a “major money-laundering country” in the 2017 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (“Report”), published this month. The country now joins 87 others as one “whose financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking.” See 22 U.S.C. § 2291(e)(7).

By way of background, the Report is a legislatively mandated, annual assessment of the efforts of foreign governments to reduce illicit narcotics production, trafficking and use, as well as their efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Each year, U.S. officials from agencies with AML responsibilities assess the pervasiveness of money laundering in these countries, which includes steps taken (or not taken) to address financial crime and money laundering, and measures to strengthen law enforcement and prosecutorial capabilities.

In regard to the Philippines, the Report concludes that “[m]oney laundering is a serious concern due to [the] international narcotics trade, high degree of corruption among government officials, trafficking in persons, and the high volume of remittances from Filipinos living abroad … [c]riminal groups use the Philippine banking system, commercial enterprises, and particularly casinos, to transfer drug and other illicit proceeds from the Philippines to offshore accounts.”

As support for the heightened designation, the Report cites to the Philippines’ “significant gaps” in its efforts to combat money laundering. For one, the country’s bank secrecy provisions “are among the World’s strictest.” In most cases, Filipino investigators must first obtain a court order to access bank records; such an order is dependent upon a sufficient showing of an ongoing “predicate crime” and neither cybercrime nor tax evasion is classified as such. Despite the country’s effort to centralize AML efforts via the Anti-Money Laundering Council (“AMCL”), since its founding in 2001, cooperation among law enforcement agencies remains “insufficient” and to date, only 49 money laundering cases have been filed. Indeed, Reuters reports that the number of prosecutions and convictions stemming from the 49 has been “virtually nil.”

The Report’s conclusions are an unwelcome development for the Philippines. Though any outcome remains to be seen, their label as a major money-laundering hub may serve as a catalyst for offshore firms to “de-risk” by cutting its ties with local banks and intermediaries.

If you would like to remain updated on these issues, please click here to subscribe to Money Laundering Watch.

In part two of our review of the 2016 developments in Anti-Money Laundering (AML), the Bank Secrecy Act, (BSA), the criminal money laundering statutes, forfeiture, and related issues, we discuss four additional key topics:

You can read more about these topics areas in the blogs that follow.  Click here to read the full article 2016 Year in Review: Money Laundering (Part Two).  Click here if you missed Part One of our 2016 year in review.

If you would like to remain updated on these issues, please click here to subscribe to Money Laundering Watch. To learn more about Ballard Spahr’s Anti-Money Laundering Team, please click here.

Big Stock Photo_805445On August 30, 2016, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and four U.S. federal banking regulators sought to correct a problem—at least in part one of their own creation—by issuing a “Joint Fact Sheet on Foreign Correspondent Banking” to clarify enforcement priorities regarding AML/BSA and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) regimes. The Fact Sheet highlighted the importance of maintaining correspondent banking relationships with foreign financial institutions and the value of the free flow of monies within and across global economies.

Continue Reading 2016 Year End Review: Banking Regulators Try to Ease Concerns Over Aggressive AML/BSA Enforcement