A US financial crime agency’s plan to let foreign police seek information from American banks is drawing opposition from groups representing US financial institutions.
The proposed rule by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a division of the treasury department, would also permit US state and local law enforcement authorities to make similar information-sharing requests of banks.
Regulations adopted after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 allow only federal law enforcement agencies, through FinCEN, to request such information.
FinCEN can require US financial institutions to search their records to determine whether they have done business with individuals suspected, based on credible evidence, of terrorism or money laundering.
Written comments on the proposed expansion of the rule were due on December 16, and more than half a dozen organisations, including the American Bankers Association and the Credit Union National Association, said the plan is intrusive.
In a 13-page letter, ABA vice-president Robert Rowe called the proposal “premature and unfounded” and said it represented a “dangerous broadening” of the information-sharing process.
“There is absolutely no indication that the extraordinary power available under the 314(a) data-match programme was ever intended by Congress to be put at the service of foreign countries,” he wrote.
The Credit Union National Association, a trade organisation that represents thousands of state and federal credit unions, said it was worried about the burden the rule would impose on its members.
FinCEN has estimated that information requests under the rule would require no more than 72 additional hours per year per institution to process. The association said many of its small members cannot afford to automate their processes.
Source: The Financial Express
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