We discuss two recent federal court opinions addressing two issues of increasing frequency and importance: (i) the potential civil liability of financial institutions to non-customers and other third-parties for alleged failures to implement an effective Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) program; and (ii) the ability of private plaintiffs to sue foreign defendants who allegedly committed offenses against the plaintiffs abroad, and then laundered the proceeds of those offenses in the U.S. This second issue, of course, is relevant to U.S. government actions against foreign persons.
As we shall see, banks are not necessarily liable to anyone impacted by a bank’s alleged AML-related failures. Conversely, foreign defendants may be surprised by the ability of plaintiffs to haul them into U.S. court to redress alleged criminal offenses committed entirely abroad — if those foreign defendants sent the fruits of those offenses to the U.S. The case relevant to the latter point involves allegations of billions of dollars of theft and corruption committed in Kazakhstan as part of a complicated scheme to purchase high-end real estate in New York (a recurring theme in recent money laundering enforcement efforts, and in this blog) via European shell companies, using in part accounts held at the troubled foreign bank FBME, about which we have blogged before.
Continue Reading The Courts Speak: Bank Liability for Alleged AML Failures Impacting Third Parties, and Hauling into U.S. Court Foreign Defendants Who Launder the Alleged Fruits of Foreign Crime