The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, both recently issued reports addressing worrisome trends in technology-assisted financial fraud.  The reports seek to engage the financial services industry in partnering more closely to reduce associated losses. Specifically, the Federal Reserve issued a report entitled Synthetic Identity Fraud in the U.S. Payment System. FinCEN issued a report entitled Manufacturing and Construction Top Targets for Business Email Compromise. Collectively, the reports reflect…

On July 22, 2019, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) (collectively the federal banking agencies), issued a joint statement entitled Joint Statement on Risk-Focused Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (the “statement”). The specific emphasis of the statement is to reiterate that the federal agencies…

The Office of the Comptroller of Currency (“OCC”) issued an extraordinary announcement regarding the decision of a former bank general counsel – Daniel Weiss, formerly employed by Rabobank, N.A. – to enter into a Consent Order in which Mr. Weiss agreed to be barred from the banking industry and pay a $50,000 fine. The Consent Order is relatively generic; the Notice of Charges issued by the OCC which lead up to the Consent Order is…

Foreign Banks Reliant on U.S. Correspondent Services Should Take Note of New Rules We are pleased to present this guest blog by Hdeel Abdelhady, who is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and Principal at MassPoint Legal and Strategy Advisory PLLC, her boutique law and strategy firm. Ms. Abdelhady focuses on regulatory compliance and transactional matters, including cross-border trade and finance transactions and regulation. As Ms. Abdelhady discusses, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (…

On June 21, 2019, the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”), a multi-national, inter-governmental body established in 1989 “to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system,” issued its Guidance for a Risk-Based Approach to Virtual Assets and Virtual Asset Service Providers (the “Guidance”), i.e. virtual currency and virtual currency platforms. Although the standards…

Last week, a grand jury in the Southern District of Florida indicted two former Venezuelan officials, charging them with seven counts of money laundering and one count of money-laundering conspiracy. The charges relate to bribes and kickbacks provided to the officials who headed the country’s energy department and state-owned electricity company, Corporacion Electrica Nacional, S.A. (“Corpoelec”). The former officials allegedly received cash payments and received wire transfers, including from a bank in the Southern District…

Second Post in a Two-Post Series on the ILLICIT CASH Act A discussion draft of legislation recently introduced in the Senate, the Improving Laundering Laws and Increasing Comprehensive Information Tracking of Criminal Activity in Shell Holdings (ILLICIT CASH) Act (the “Act”), seeks to modernize federal anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) laws. The Act’s bipartisan drafters assert that the “US AML-CFT laws have not kept pace with the growing…