Cooperate with Law Enforcement Agencies and Watch Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5783) to provide a safe harbor for financial institutions that maintain a customer account at the request of a Federal or State law enforcement agency, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, as a former community banker, I have dealt with the conflict of wanting to help law enforcement agencies when receiving what is called a keep open letter, while not being able to because of the need also to comply with the requirements of my regulatory responsibilities, the rules on setting out how banks have to open and close a suspected account by a regulator.

Today, the overall purpose of this bill is to support law enforcement and reduce money laundering and terrorist financing through our banking system. That is why, along with my good friend from Illinois, Dr. Foster, I was pleased to introduce this commonsense bill. It enables partnerships without repercussions between law enforcement agencies and local community financial institutions by allowing law enforcement to monitor the cash flows associated with criminal investigations at a financial institution.

Under the Bank Secrecy Act and the anti-money laundering regulations, banks face strict rules for managing accounts so that they cannot facilitate money laundering, terrorism financing, drug running, or other illegal activities.

Sometimes banks receive notices from law enforcement agencies known as keep open letters. That requests a bank to keep open an account so that the law enforcement agency can track payments and better monitor criminals.

Such requests might come from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, local police, or any other law enforcement agency.

If banks help law enforcement comply with keep open letter requests, they in turn, unfortunately, risk being penalized by regulators for allowing an account to be open and continue to be open by someone who is suspected of a crime.

This commonsense bill supports those efforts by law enforcement by allowing the financial institutions to comply with the keep open requests and maintain a suspicious account without being penalized by regulators.

Financial institutions will no longer be liable for maintaining an account for law enforcement investigative purposes.

Under this bill, no Federal department or agency may take an adverse supervisory action with respect to that financial institution for keeping open such an account.

This is a commonsense bill and I urge all my colleagues to support it. It will give law enforcement the tools they need to prosecute bad actors and, I think, be better and more fair in its treatment for our financial institutions.

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Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just urge my colleagues to recognize this as a strong group of bipartisan work by Dr. Foster and it received solid support in the committee, that it balances the law enforcement obligations to investigate criminals, but also treats, in the regulatory system, our community financial institutions in a more fair manner. I hope all my colleagues will support it.

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