Money laundering

A bipartisan group of senators Tuesday urged the Treasury Department and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to speed up implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act. It's only the latest of several efforts by lawmakers urging regulators to move faster since Fincen missed the statutory implementation deadline in January.

The number of suspicious activity reports involving cryptocurrency topped 90,000 in 2021, according to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The reason for the uptick may be that crypto is becoming more mainstream.

Citigroup has been released from a 2012 enforcement action that faulted its anti-money-laundering efforts. But company executives are expected to spend a lot of time over the next few years seeking to resolve a pair of more recent consent orders.

Deutsche Bank's offices in Frankfurt are being searched by law enforcement authorities over reports about potential money laundering that were filed by the lender.

Acting Director Himamauli Das acknowledged concerns from Democratic lawmakers that Fincen was moving too slowly to implement beneficial ownership rules but said the agency "will likely continue to do so, because our budget situation has required us to make significant trade-offs among competing priorities.”

Anchorage Digital Bank has an inadequate AML compliance program and will have to create a committee within 15 days to develop a remediation plan and submit progress reports, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Even as the Biden administration ramped up sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen faced questions from Republican lawmakers who want to go further. Yellen, meanwhile, stressed the value of working together with allies.

Banks must comply quickly with fast-moving sanctions against the Kremlin and have to spot questionable Russian companies and wealthy individuals. At the same time, some need to deal with settlement risk of trades that involve rubles. Sophisticated data sharing and analysis are making it easier to do the job.

The White House's $5.8 trillion spending proposal to Congress includes more dollars for anti-money-laundering enforcement, Small Business Administration loan guarantee programs and affordable housing financed by community development financial institutions.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency slammed the San Antonio bank for anti-money-laundering violations. The penalty is the latest in a series of regulatory problems for USAA.