LIKE politicians, financial regulators know that late on a Friday is a good time to slip out bad news. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), part of America’s Treasury, chose February 19th to announce it had rescinded a devastating finding against a European bank suspected of facilitating money-laundering. The withdrawal, less than a year after the designation, looks like a climbdown.
In March 2015 FinCEN branded Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA) as a “primary money-laundering concern”, saying its top managers had moved cash for criminal groups. This so-called “311” measure (after the relevant section of the Patriot Act of 2001) is usually crippling for the bank concerned, because in effect it cuts it off from the American financial system and any banks that participate in it. BPA was no exception: the government of Andorra, a mountainous financial haven nestled between France and Spain, ended up taking over the bank despite objections from its majority shareholders, the Cierco family; its Madrid-based wealth-management arm was liquidated. The Ciercos, insisting there was no legal basis for FinCEN’s move, sued in the American...Continue reading
Source: Business and finance http://ift.tt/1TGUHTC
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