The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network announced the launch of its newly created Global Investigations Division (GID), with responsibility for targeting terrorist financing and money laundering threats, both domestically and internationally.

Matthew Stiglitz, a former principal deputy chief in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, will lead the GID. Stiglitz brings considerable experience to FinCEN in complex international investigations after spending more than 24 years as a state and federal prosecutor.

The GID will leverage FinCEN’s authorities under the Bank Secrecy Act, including Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, to investigate and target terrorist finance and money laundering threats. The division also will work more closely with foreign counterparts to coordinate actions against such threats when appropriate, FinCEN said.

The GID was founded upon FinCEN’s former Office of Special Measures (OSM), which was previously part of FinCEN’s Enforcement Division. The division will employ FinCEN’s authorities to detect and deter a wide range of potential threats to national security and financial systems, namely weapons of mass destruction, rogue state actors, transnational organized crime, international narcotics trafficking, and terrorism.

 

Jaclyn Jaeger is a freelance contributor to Compliance Week after working for the company for 15 years. She writes on a wide variety of topics, including ethics and compliance, risk management, legal, enforcement, technology, and more.

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