By J. Preston Carter, J.D., LL.M.
Jamal El-Hindi, Deputy Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, stressed the importance of information sharing in remarks at the Parliamentary Intelligence Security Forum in Vienna, Austria. El-Hindi discussed FinCEN’s work and stressed the importance of overcoming obstacles to information sharing in the fight against terrorism.
FinCEN is the financial intelligence unit (FIU) of the United States, El-Hindi told the audience. He said the agency shares information not only with U.S. law enforcement agencies, intelligence authorities, and border police, but also with foreign FIUs.
Information sharing. El-Hindi said FinCEN “recognizes that no one jurisdiction holds all the information necessary to create the full picture of a network of illicit actors, whether they are facilitating terrorism or other crimes.” According to El-Hindi, “Because we don’t know which agency within a jurisdiction might hold the next piece of information that will connect two dots, we promote broad information sharing between the FIUs, their law enforcement, their intelligence agencies, and their border police.”
FinCEN receives approximately 55,000 new financial institution filings each day, said El-Hindi. The majority of the financial intelligence FinCEN collects comes from two reporting streams: one on large cash transactions exceeding $10,000, and the other on suspicious transactions identified by financial institutions. FinCEN then makes this information available to more than 9,000 law enforcement and regulators who have been authorized to access the data. Usage of the data is subject to auditing to ensure that appropriate data security and safeguarding protocols are followed, he added.
“Importantly,” he said, “we also share information with relevant foreign FIUs and pre-authorize those FIUs to further share it with their domestic law enforcement and intelligence agencies. We do this in recognition of the fact that terrorists and terrorist facilitators move from one jurisdiction to another.”
Obstacles. El-Hamid discussed obstacles to information sharing that must be overcome to improve global efforts to fight terrorist financing:
- Many FIUs are not sharing enough information with or receiving data from their own law enforcement or other domestic agencies.
- Many FIUs currently face domestic legal restrictions that prevent FIUs themselves from sharing information with one another as effectively as possible.
- Private sector institutions have difficulties sharing information with FIUs across borders.
Identifying and working to eliminate roadblocks to information sharing will help enable FIUs become more effective partners, within their own countries and with other governments, and will help FIUs take a more proactive approach to the use of financial intelligence, said El-Hamid. Although he acknowledged that promoting the collection of financial intelligence while also protecting data privacy is a challenge, El-Hamid emphasized that “These two public goods should not be viewed as inconsistent with one another. Indeed, for the sake of protecting the individual liberties which we all hold dear, they must be viewed hand-in-hand as complements to one another.”
For more information about fighting terrorism with financial intelligence, subscribe to the Banking and Finance Law Daily.
