Government-industry information sharing improving?
By Andrew Cochran
Section 314(a) of the USA Patriot Act requires the Treasury Department to establish a system through which law enforcement can request assistance from financial institutions to locate accounts and transactions of persons that may be involved in terrorism or money laundering. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at Treasury tried to start an automated contact system in late 2002, but glitches and complaints from financial institutions led FinCEN to pull back for several months before restarting in February 2003. FinCEN now transmits requests to 33,884 points of contact at more than 25,000 financial institutions once every 2 weeks. It's a good time to assess the results of the system...
FinCEN issued a "Fact Sheet" on December 21, which can be downloaded here. According to the report, law enforcement has requested information in 132 terrorist financing cases and 235 money laundering cases. Here are the bottom-line results:
1,378 New Accounts Identified
76 New Transactions
725 Grand Jury Subpoenas issued
11 Search Warrants
129 Administrative Subpoenas/Summons/Other
9 Arrests
2 Indictments
There are no claims of convictions and no cost data - those are worth Congress's review before the next appropriations season begins.
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