22 February 2006
U.S. Officials To Attend Anti-Money Laundering Conference
March 15-17 event in Florida to focus on laws, regulations to combat laundering
By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- A number of U.S. officials will participate in an international conference on combating money laundering, to be held March 15-17 in Hollywood, Florida.
Presented by a Miami-based company called Money Laundering Alert, the conference will focus on a growing body of laws and regulations that governments around the world are enacting to combat the crime of money laundering. Money laundering is described as the processing of criminal proceeds to disguise their illegal origin. The illegal practice is said to be having a corrosive effect on economies worldwide, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Organizers expect 1,300 attendees from the banking regulatory and enforcement field from 60 countries.
The event follows a previous Florida conference on money laundering that was held February 9-10 in Miami, where U.S. officials also participated. (See related article.)
Organizers of the conference say "no field of regulation, law enforcement or international affairs generates the controversies, changes and costs that the money-laundering field does." The issue, say the organizers, "gets more challenging and complex each year for all the businesses that are covered under the growing body of laws and regulations that governments around the world enact and issue with regularity."
Among the announced U.S. officials participating in the conference are Lisa Arquette, associate director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's anti-laundering and financial crimes branch; Richard Weber, chief of the asset-forfeiture and money-laundering section at the Department of Justice; Jeffrey Breinholt, the Department of Justice's counterterrorism section deputy chief; Jamel El-Hindi, the Treasury Department's associate director of program policy and implementation in the Office of Foreign Assets Control; and Ann Jaedicke, deputy controller for compliance in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Panel discussions will include "How to Build a Suspicious-Activity Reporting Program Regulators Will Applaud." This panel will explore how "weak suspicious-activity reporting programs are an element in almost all cases of regulatory sanctions against financial institutions."
Another session will discuss "How to Follow the Money in Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing."
A session related to the Americas is entitled: "Latin America and the Caribbean -- Hot-Button Issues in Money-Laundering Controls." This session will discuss how almost every country in the region has implemented an anti-money laundering system, including suspicious-transaction reporting and recordkeeping requirements, while also examining questions that remain about how the requirements are being implemented and enforced.
Moderating that session is Susan Galli, senior anti-money laundering coordinator for the Citigroup financial service company's global anti-money laundering team. Galli served on the U.S. Treasury Department's Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group. The U.S. government uses the Bank Secrecy Act to fight drug trafficking, money laundering and other crimes.
More information on the conference is available on its Web site.
See also U.S. State Department electronic journals The Fight Against Money Laundering and The Global War Against Terrorist Financing.
For additional information on U.S. policy, see Money Laundering.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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