Dan Margolies of Reuters is reporting that:

The rule broadens one adopted by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a division of the U.S. Treasury Department, after the September 11 attacks. That original rule allowed FinCEN to require financial institutions to search their records to determine whether they maintained accounts or conducted transactions with individuals that federal law enforcement agencies suspect, “based on credible evidence,” have engaged in terrorist activity or money laundering. FinCEN had said it wanted to expand the rule because of its success in helping track terrorist financing and major money laundering cases and to satisfy treaty obligations with the European Union. FinCEN, established in 1990 to provide and analyze financial intelligence, administers the Bank Secrecy Act. The act requires financial institutions to submit reports to the government aimed at preventing money laundering. The agency said on Friday that expanding the rule to foreign law enforcement agencies would “greatly benefit the United States by granting law enforcement agencies in the United States reciprocal rights to obtain information about matching accounts in EU member states.”

More than half a dozen financial trade groups and associations, including the American Bankers Association and the Credit Union National Association, opposed the expanded rule as too burdensome and intrusive.

The full article is here.

Special thanks to the Law Offices of Linda Friedman Ramirez for the reference to this material.