Why are you being hacked, and how legislators can stop this

Over two decades, it has worked with policy and law enforcement makers in North America and Europe to enhance financial guarantees that prevent state sponsors of terrorism, violent extremist groups, weapons and criminal network publishers from exploiting the American banking system. It has supported difficult penalties. It has been pushed to close the enforcement of the gaps. It has worked to keep those who enable the illegal funding and trade, frankly or not, from the account.

From the beginning, banks were essential partners in these efforts. Through procedures “Learn about your customer” and the anti -money laundering laws that followed the 1970 banking company, financial institutions have provided data and intelligence that helps law enforcement illegal activities such as human tracking rings, fentian supply chains and terrorist networks.

These frameworks played an important role in protecting the country. Unfortunately, some tools aimed at identity and stopping criminal activity are now targeting and improving legal customers from customers from the financial system – a phenomenon that is widely known as “Debanking”.

Most Americans do not realize that any cash treatment exceeds $ 10,000 leads to the creation of a currency treatment report submitted to the federal government. The threshold of this dollar amount was determined when Lindon Johnson was in the White House, and incredibly, it was not updated at all to the inflation. In today’s economy, it may cover $ 10,000 barely the cost of a used car. However, banks still have to report such transactions, regardless of context, as millions of reports are produced every year that provide a minimal value of law enforcement.

Suspicious activity reports are another layer of government audit. Banks have submitted more than 4 million suspicious activity reports only last year, according to the Treasury. Former officials waive this paper collapse, do not do much to improve public safety. In fact, it can create a burden for investigators who seek to define and separate the truly suspicious activity from worldly. When he cannot apply the signal signal, it becomes dangerous.

Meanwhile, the organizers continue to pressure banks to apply extensive risk signs on the entire industries just because they include heavy cash business, customer service abroad or operate in inappropriate sectors-all in the name of maintaining our financial system “safe and sound”. This is not theoretical. Religious charitable societies, international aid organizations and countless companies have faced companies owned by immigrants threatening Debanking. They are not terrorists or criminals. They are American colleagues who are paid to the financial margins by a system that confuses bureaucracy and vigilance.

Congress began to address the problem through the Organizational Urban Foundation Law. This legislation would increase transparency and accountability in how the agencies are issued guidance and conducting financial institutions exams and customers. This will help ensure that banks are not punished to serve legal customers in the political sensitive sectors. It is an encouraging start, but it will not be sufficient on its own.

The most effective policy makers can take today to confront unintended citizens for legal citizens is to update the money laundering framework. The update must ensure that banks provide related and implemented information that really helps researchers and allow financial institutions to replace sclerosis and reporting data analysis that discovers real patterns of abuse. Banks will continue to verify identities, monitor account accounts and reports at the moment they see suspicious activity.

These reforms will sharpen these responsibilities and make our country and the banking industry safer. Moreover, clear standards will allow financial institutions to maintain relationships with legal customers while giving authorities more access to data when real risks appear.

The United States has led the world to build a anti -terrorist financial system and illegal finance. This leadership depends on a widely reliable and reliable financial system. When incorrectly honest actors are pushed arbitrarily, without transparency, and financial access is treated as a privilege and not really, the basis of that driving begins to corrosion.

Political makers do not need to choose between security and fairness. The anti -laundering system will enhance both. Organizers and institutions will be allowed to focus attention on those who are real risks and reduce the burden on each of the financial institutions committed to the law and their agents

I spent a lot of my life trying to make America safer by making our financial system more difficult to use it. That task is still important. But the tools we built decades ago are not suitable for today’s challenges. Without repair, the anti -money laundering system will continue to fail in its simplest duty: the distinction between the friend and the enemy.

Congress and management should be behaved now. The risks are very high that do not allow self -insufficiency to carry today.

David Ibsen is a founder and former executive director of the counter -extremist project and an expert in the effects of penalties and financesSystems.