Banks in defence of the homeland: Nexus of ethics and suspicious activity reporting

Ryder, Nicholas; Turksen, Umut

Abstract

This article considers the impact of the legislative and policy responses by the United States of America towards terrorist financing. Firstly, the article provides an overview of the mechanisms utilised by terrorist organisations to fund their operations and the subsequent legislative reactions. Secondly, a critical analysis of the two key parts of the US CTF policy – the ability to freeze or confiscate known or suspected terrorist assets and the imposition of onerous reporting requirements on financial and credit institutions, known as the SAR regime is provided. Thirdly, the article highlights the banks’ use of CFT provisions that raise the spectre of racial profiling, and critiques the fairness and success of such measures imposed on particular group of persons. It is argued that these practices, such as SARs, are a shift to a pre-emptive criminal justice framework which raises serious questions as to their ethics and legality. The objective is not to provide a comprehensive analysis of the laws and policies, but to emphasise areas that have not yet been subject to sufficient scrutiny from the perspective of success and equality in the application of the US CFT regime.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Jun 25, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 15, 2016
• Journal: Contemporary Issues in Law (Special Issue on Law, Ethics and Counter-Terrorism)
• Print ISSN: 1357-0374
• Publisher: Lawtext Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 4
• Keywords: terrorist financing, war on terror, terrorism, ethics
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/826410
• Publisher URL: http://www.lawtext.com/lawtextweb/default.jsp?PageID=2&PublicationID=5
• Contract Date: Nov 15, 2016