Acceleration In Suspicious Activity Reporting Warrants Another Look

Acceleration In Suspicious Activity Reporting Warrants Another Look by Aaron Klein and Kristofer Readling, Bipartisan Policy Center

The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) was originally enacted in 1970 to restrict money laundering by organized criminals and tax evaders. Since 1970, the structure and usage of the BSA were repeatedly changed and expanded, as noted in a previous Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) post. This analysis looks at the impact of the increasing scope of anti-money laundering laws.

BPC’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative set out to find empirical evidence of anti-money laundering (AML) expansion. The data shows a 55 percent increase in the number of Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) filings after the USA PATRIOT Act (Patriot Act) was passed from the pre-2001...