Financial institutions that fail to follow U.S. money laundering policies could soon find themselves facing massive penalties. Earlier this week, New York state's top financial regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, told reporters that he was considering what steps could be taken in order to punish those banks who violate United States sanction laws in their dollar clearing and various business dealings.
The New York Department of Financial Services has strengthened their hard line stance on dealing with those businesses who disregard the country's anti-money laundering laws. Steep fines are often imposed on those with shady business dealings—either domestically or internationally—but Lawsky believes these deterrents might not be going far enough in some cases.
Lawsky, New York's first Superintendent of Financial Services, is still considering the repercussions of banning major companies from engaging in dollar clearing practices for a period of time lasting from six months to a year. Though he believes it would send the right message about keeping your business dealings legal, it could have unintended consequences for the U.S. economy.
"We're considering some new, similar ideas when it comes to our investigations into banks that used their dollar-clearing operations to launder money, but we have not come to any firm conclusions on that issue yet," Lawsky told reporters, though he would not name any banks that his office was specifically targeting.
Lawsky believes that individual executives need to be held responsible for illegal or reckless financial dealings. If Wall Street executives faced real jail time or lost their jobs due to money laundering or other financial crimes, it would be a clear way to keep financial institutions and the people who run them from taking advantage of the system.
