Jim Freis Named FinCEN Director
By Matthew Levitt
Today, Jim Freis was named Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the U.S. Treasury Department bureau in charge of gathering and analyzing information about financial transactions to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Jim currently serves as the Treasury’s Deputy Assistant General Counsel, where he provides legal support to the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. I had the pleasure of working with him while I was at the Treasury and know firsthand how qualified he is for his new position.
Jim’s international, financial, and national security experience make him a strong selection for FinCEN Director. FinCEN plays a significant role internationally as the financial intelligence unit of the United States, and cooperates with its foreign counterparts under the umbrella of the Egmont Group. Jim has international experience working as Senior Counsel in the Legal Service of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, and knows the international arena well. The Bank for International Settlements is the central bank for many central bankers, and Jim gained exposure to international governments and financial systems while working there.
Jim has considerable financial expertise and is one of the Treasury’s true experts on the international payment system. Through his experiences at both the Federal Reserve Bank and at the Bank for International Settlements, Jim understands the fine details of the international financial system. This will serve him well as he directs FinCEN, which oversees US financial institutions. FinCEN uses legislation such as the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to insure that banks and other financial institutions maintain records, which provide vital information for investigators as they track criminals and their assets. The BSA requires financial institutions to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) on currency transactions that might lead to investigations. FinCEN aids law enforcement agencies by analyzing information gathered under the BSA and other publicly available information, and then discloses its findings in the form of reports, which law enforcement agencies use to build investigations.
In his current position as counsel for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Jim has gained invaluable national security experience. He has been involved in serious work on terrorism, Iran, and a number of other issues that will be high on FinCEN’s list of priorities. FinCEN has encountered some difficulties in recent years, notably with the scrapping of an ambitious IT project to give electronic access to BSA data, which former director Robert Werner testified about last year. Given Jim’s international, financial, and national security experience, it is fair to say that FinCEN is in capable hands and will play a significant role in countering terrorist financing.