[IP] more on tracking old money
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jonathan Peterson <jonathan.peterson@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: August 9, 2006 9:36:44 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: : tracking old money
>Moreover, how much taxpayer money is spent gathering such information?
I hear about this stuff all the time because my wife is a consultant
specializing in federal banking regulatory compliance - the trust is
being investigated because of the Bank Secrecy Act. The law as
written by congress is VERY nebulous as to what banks need to be
doing, but the federal regulators administering the law are pressing
banks to do massive amounts of financial investigation. Banks are
stuck between protecting the privacy of their customers and the
potential for massive fines.
So instead of only investigating suspicious activity and passing on
potentially useful information to the feds, banks protect themselves
by investigating everything and passing it all along. Defeating the
purpose of the law while throwing away your privacy.
And to answer your question, NO real taxpayer money is being spent,
instead banks and financial institutions are incurring massive
amounts of new operating expenses (that are eventually passed on to
consumers). FWIW - Our back of the napkin analysis shows that
financial institutions have incurred north of $1 billion to comply
with the act, and so far it has been credited with ONE conviction (a
drug money launderer).
There is a great story of the cost and uselessness of kneejerk
lawmaking and over-zealous federal regulators who see themselves
changing from accountants to protectors of the homeland with the
stroke of a pen and the largely conservative bank presidents and
boards who've been hoist by this petard just waiting for someone to
write it.
Jonathan Peterson
jonathan@xxxxxx
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