During a speech at American Bankers Association/American Bar Association Money Laundering conference last week, Jennifer Shasky, Director of the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), said they are going to continue to work closely with the IRS to help FinCEN determine whether virtual currency exchangers and administrators are meeting their compliance obligations under the applicable rules.
Where we identify problems, as we did earlier this year in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco in a parallel enforcement action against a virtual currency company, we will use our supervisory and enforcement authorities to appropriately penalize non-compliance and drive compliance improvements.
At an American Bankers Association conference this week she told American Banker:
“There has been public reporting of connections of ISIL promoting the use of bitcoin and virtual currencies as a means of moving and raising funds, but I think we are also very focused on the traditional means of moving funds so I think we need to keep our focus on both areas.” Yet, she added: “I wouldn’t say that it is higher risk.”
We know they are very adept at social media and technology generally, so it is not a surprise that they might be interested in using emerging payment technologies as well.”
Calvery added that the Bank Secrecy Act database helped FinCEN to track ISIL’s funding.
“We had the IT system up and running. We are able to share information quite easily,” she said.
, said they are going to continue to work closely with the IRS to help FinCEN determine whether virtual currency exchangers and administrators are meeting their compliance obligations under the applicable rules.){kind=link}