The U.S. Treasury has hired one of the Justice Department’s top prosecutors to lead its anti-money laundering and counterterror finance unit, raising the department’s profile and suggesting it will take a more aggressive approach to rooting out illicit activity from U.S. markets.
Jennifer Shasky Calvery, chief of the Justice Department’s asset forfeiture and money laundering section, will start directing the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in September, the Treasury said on Monday.
The bureau, also known as FinCEN, was established in 1990 to help authorities establish money trails and produce evidence to recover assets. The 300-person unit analyzes information submitted by financial institutions on suspicious activity and writes rules to fight money laundering and terror financing.
“It suggests a very strong enforcement bias for FinCEN,” said Ann Jaedicke, a former Office of the Comptroller of the Currency regulator who is now a managing director at the Promontory Financial Group.
Under Shasky Calvery’s leadership, the Justice Department secured the forfeiture of nearly $1 billion from Barclays Bank and other financial institutions, as well as the forfeiture of some $3 million in assets from two former leaders of different oil-producing states in Nigeria.
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