E-Cash and the Treasury Department

[cpunk@remail.ecafe.org (ECafe Anonymous Remailer)]

[POSTED BY: PUBLICUS ANONYMOUS
("Oh! That Publicus.")
("Oh! That Anonymous.")

INTELLIGENCE 
N. 269, 24 July 1995 
(Vol. 16, N. 15) 
Publishing since 1980 
 
 
Editor 
Olivier Schmidt 


Intelligence, N. 269, 24 July 1995, p. 11 
 
 
RONALD K. NOBLE - U.S.A. 
 
 
This time the U.S. Treasury Department hasn't jumped the 
gun in announcing that Ronald K. Noble, the hard-line 
Undersecretary for Enforcement at Treasury, was the new 
chairman of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering 
(FATF) set up in Paris by the G-7 group of industrialized 
nations in 1988.  Last year at this time, the Netherlands took 
over the chair but U.S. Treasury wrongly issued an announcement 
that Noble was occupying the post.  Asked by "Intelligence" for 
an explanation, Treasury simply stated that it had "made a 
mistake."  Last year in Washington, Noble backed bankers 
complaining about the several million Currency Transaction 
Reports (CTR) they were required to file every year.  Noble and 
the banks said that filing was not necessary on deposits by 
businesses like department, grocery and convenience stores that 
routinely make fluctuating large deposits in cash, and Treasury 
intended to slash CTR filings by 30 percent.  Critics contend 
that businesses exempt from CTR filing will quickly be used by 
criminal organizations to launder their cash. 
 
As Undersecretary for Enforcement at Treasury, Noble 
oversees five of the eight largest federal law enforcement 
agencies in the U.S.:  the Secret Service, U.S. Customs, the 
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), and the IRS 
Criminal Investigation Division, and the Financial Crimes 
Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which was taken over by Treasury's 
Office of Financial Enforcement under Noble last year at this 
time.  At the FATF, Noble replaced Leo Verwoerd of the 
Netherlands on 1 July 1995 and will direct the FATF for one 
year.  Following last year's resolution to "monitor 
implementation of the forty Recommendations of 1990 by its 
members," Noble intends to use forceful methods including open 
criticism in annual FATF reports of non-complying members, 
followed by written reprimands from the FATF chairman to 
recidivist member countries, and finally high-level mission 
visits to the faulty country.  Greece has already been 
criticized twice for its lack of progress in implementing FATF 
recommendations. 
 .