The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report exploring U.S. efforts to stop profits from drug trafficking from entering financial systems in the Western Hemisphere through money laundering.
The report describes U.S. agency oversight and monitoring of compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the efforts of the Departments of State and Treasury to build capabilities in other Western Hemisphere countries to combat narcotics-related money laundering.
The Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) administers the BSA and related regulations and monitors compliance with the help of U.S. financial regulators and agencies. The BSA provides the legal framework for combating money laundering and requires financial institutions to retain certain records of customer transactions, verify customers’ identities and report suspicious transactions.
U.S. financial regulators and FinCEN work with other Western Hemisphere countries to combat money laundering by sharing information and analysis on financial crimes, the report said.
The report also highlighted a program by the Treasury to provide training related to developing legal and regulatory frameworks in partner countries to impeded money laundering. The Department of State funds such training and provides equipment to these countries.
The two departments provided approximately $63 million to support this capacity-building and technical assistance, GAO said, with $52 million of this funding came from the Department of State. Mexico received the largest amount of this funding of any country with $24 million from the Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs through fiscal years 2011 to 2015.