U.S. Department of the Treasury

(Archived Content)

FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Thank you. It is a pleasure to be with you here this afternoon and to help close out this conference.
The fight against money laundering is a priority for the Treasury department. I know that fight could not succeed without the dedication and effort that each of you brings to your job. I thank those in the Treasury law enforcement bureaus, the Department of Justice law enforcement bureaus and U.S. Attorneys' offices, and the representatives of State and local enforcement who are here today for a job well done. You honor us with your service.

Let me thank especially those Treasury agents and supervisors from the Customs Service and Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division here today for their hard work and success. I also want to recognize the terrific work that Director Jim Sloan and his FinCEN staff have done to help assist federal and state law enforcement agencies in making money laundering cases. Treasury is extremely proud of your accomplishments. We recognize that the fight against money laundering is a team effort, and I am equally proud of the strong working relationship our bureaus enjoy with their colleagues at the Justice Department and with state and local agencies.

In the last several years, you have detected, investigated, and prosecuted more money laundering cases than ever before - and the world has taken notice. The money laundering cases that you have initiated - from Operation Casablanca to the still ongoing Bank of New York investigation in the Southern District of New York - illustrate the global nature of the money laundering problem as well as your commitment to fighting both domestic and international money laundering. These kinds of cases can and do have an impact on the international financial system.

But we can accomplish more. In a world where capital can silently travel the globe with the push of a button, proceeds of crime can move just as quickly and just as quietly, which makes it even harder to detect, investigate, and prosecute money laundering.

In my remarks today I would like to discuss two areas where we are working to strengthen our armory in the fight against money laundering:

• First, by improving our ability to fight international money laundering.
• Second, by providing new assistance to state and local enforcement agencies in their war against dirty money.

In the last 15 months, we at Treasury, and our partners at the Department of Justice, have produced two National Money Laundering Strategies. Those Strategies set forth a comprehensive domestic and international approach to combat money laundering.

We recognize that many of you are frustrated by the fact that your cases too often lead you to targets located in countries that either cannot or will not cooperate with your investigation. To address this problem, we continue to engage our international partners. The undercover operations, investigations, and prosecutions that you contribute to every day will only be able to dismantle the international system of money laundering with the active help of our international partners. Until we can fight money laundering everywhere, we will not be fully successful in our efforts here at home.

That is why the Treasury Department has exerted so much time and effort in working with the 29-country members of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to name and shame those jurisdictions who allow money laundering activity to flourish. We are also working closely on these issues with our G-7 allies and the major international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

We have worked hard with our allies to seek multilateral solutions and apply coordinated responses to curb the spread of money laundering. For example, the G-7 Finance Ministers recently pledged to discuss conditioning or restricting financial transactions and aid assistance by the international financial institutions to those jurisdictions who are not vigilant in the fight against money laundering.

We are seeing positive results from this work, and hope and expect that you will also see these results in the field. FATF publicly identified 15 problem jurisdictions in June and the U.S. issued advisories about these countries to our banks and financial institutions on July 8. In the past three months, seven of the countries have enacted new or tougher anti-money laundering laws and five other countries are either drafting new laws or regulations or have expressed a high-level commitment to do so. These steps should help your investigations involving these countries.

• First, banks are likely to file additional suspicious activity reports (SARs) for financial transactions relating to these countries which should allow you to develop additional leads and evidence in your cases.
• Second, foreign law enforcement officials are likely to be more responsive to your MLAT requests for assistance. If they are not, we want to know about it, and we will express our concerns internationally at the appropriate level to those countries striving to get off of the FATF list and to have our bank advisory modified or rescinded.

We are also working with Congress to ensure that we have all the tools we need to fight money laundering. As promised in the 2000 Strategy, we submitted two major bills to Congress to address gaps and shortcomings in our own money laundering laws. Unfortunately, Congress did not pass either of these important bills despite the nonpartisan nature of the problem and the bipartisan solution supported by leading members of Congress.

I am heartened that the House Banking Committee voted 31-1 in June 2000 to send the International Counter-Money Laundering and Foreign Anticorruption Act of 2000 to the full House. I believe that the next Congress will be in a position to pass both this bill and the more domestically focused Money Laundering Act of 2000 in its next session.

Combating money laundering everywhere means not only working with our international partners overseas, but also working with our States and cities to help them address money laundering in their communities. The Financial Crime-Free Communities (C-FIC) Grant Program is a key element in this part of our fight against money laundering.

The $2.3 million in C-FIC grants that I am announcing today with the Department of Justice will help our state and local enforcement colleagues develop innovative approaches to attack money laundering.

The goal of C-FIC is to provide seed capital for emerging state and local counter-money laundering enforcement efforts to detect and prevent money laundering and related financial crimes, whether related to narcotics or other underlying offenses. C-FIC grants can help state and local communities to marshal information and expertise to build innovative approaches to money laundering control and enforcement.
The grants will help state and local authorities to fight money laundering in four ways:

• First by funding additional prosecution efforts.
• Second, by creating money laundering investigation units.
• Third, by funding studies into how laundered money is exported out of New York State.
• And fourth, by funding research into the domestic movement of laundered funds through money transmitters and Money Service Businesses.

C-FIC grantees will collaborate closely with HIFCAs, where appropriate, to leverage our state and federal resources in the fight against money laundering.

I am proud to announce these nine inaugural C-FIC grant award recipients with Attorney General Reno. They are; the San Bernardino, CA Sheriff's Department, the San Diego Police Department, the Arizona Attorney General's Office, the Texas Attorney General's Office, the New York State Police, the New York Attorney General's Office, the Illinois State Police, the Chicago Police Department, and the Florida State's Attorney's Office in West Palm Beach.
Congress has appropriated over $2.5 million for the next round of C-FIC grants, and I look forward to announcing additional C-FIC recipients in the future.

Conclusion.

In conclusion, let me thank all of you again for your hard work. I am pleased that the Departments of Treasury and Justice can work so well together in addressing the issue of money laundering, and I look forward to even more success in the future.