Many former top Treasury officials have joined banks in saying that existing regulations don’t give them the tools they need to better surveil the trillions of currency transactions they handle every day. Rather, they report so much data—many with unnecessary red-flagged transactions—that the information flow often obscures illicit activities.
“The FinCEN files illustrate the alarming truth that an enormous amount of illicit money is sloshing around our financial system, and that U.S. banks play host and facilitator to rogues and criminals that represent some of America’s most insidious national security threats,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a former Treasury sanctions official.