At a public hearing on July 31, 2012, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer asserted that “financial institutions are often law enforcement’s first line of defense” in the war against money laundering.1 Despite this sentiment, a recent trend seems to be to treat financial institutions less like the Justice Department’s ally and more like public enemy number one when it comes to prosecutions involving international financial transactions. In connection with a series of high-profile cases against financial institutions, federal prosecutors have turned their attention to the efficacy of institutional anti-money laundering programs, announcing their intention to pursue non-compliance cases traditionally policed by federal regulators “whose punishments usually amount to a strong slap on the wrist.”2 Recent prosecutions and investigations of global financial institutions prove the point, demonstrating nascent attempts by federal prosecutors to criminalize regulatory non-compliance.
Historically, federal money laundering cases typically grew out of the investigation of underlying crimes, such as mail, wire or securities fraud, drugs, or corruption, and the discovery that the proceeds of these crimes had been laundered through the U.S. financial system. Money laundering charges often were added on to the substantive criminal charges and financial institutions were sometimes implicated for aiding and abetting the laundering of funds.
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