Bank Secrecy Act filings were used in IRS criminal investigations that led to $7.7 billion in asset seizures during the last two years, with an average sentence of 38 months for prosecutions, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said this week in its year-in-review report for fiscal year 2022. BSA data were the principal reason for 15.8% of investigations conducted by the IRS’s criminal unit in FY 2022 alone, with more than 84% of the agency’s criminal investigations using BSA data in some manner.
At the same time, the Department of Justice reported that BSA data was used in 46% of active investigations into transnational organized crime from 2020 to 2022, according to FinCEN. BSA data was also used by the department in 39.6% of active Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigations, 36.3% of active complex financial crimes investigations, 27.5% of active public corruption investigations and 20.6% of active international terrorism investigations. Collectively, 472 federal, state and local law enforcement, regulatory and national security agencies have access to BSA reports and FinCEN Query. Authorized users conducted over 2.3 million searches using FinCEN Query in FY 2022, FinCEN said
