# Financial Crimes Enforcement Network **Entity class:** Treasury bureau and U.S. financial intelligence unit **Domain:** Financial intelligence / anti-money laundering / information sharing **Doc Type:** Agency Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition The **Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)** is a bureau of the [[wiki/United States Department of the Treasury|Department of the Treasury]], a component of [[wiki/Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence|TFI]], and the United States financial intelligence unit. It administers the [[wiki/Bank Secrecy Act|Bank Secrecy Act]], receives and protects required financial reports, analyzes illicit-finance information, and makes appropriate data and analytical support available to authorized law-enforcement, regulatory, national-security, and international partners. ## How Law Enforcement Reaches Financial Activity FinCEN's Section 314(a) process allows eligible law-enforcement agencies to ask financial institutions to locate accounts and transactions of persons who may be involved in terrorism or significant money laundering. Qualified agencies can also receive secure direct access to BSA data after entering an agreement with FinCEN and completing required training. This is one answer to the question of where counterterrorism financial data lives. The government's BSA layer resides with FinCEN, but the underlying commercial records often remain with the financial institutions that created or retained them. A [[wiki/Bank Secrecy Act Suspicious Activity Report|SAR]] describes activity and identifies supporting documentation; it is not necessarily a complete copy of every transaction record. ## Public-Private and International Network FinCEN connects government to financial institutions through reporting, advisories, requests, feedback, and FinCEN Exchange. As the U.S. financial intelligence unit, it also exchanges appropriate information with foreign FIUs through the Egmont Group. These mechanisms turn dispersed private financial observations into a governed intelligence and law-enforcement resource. ## Sources / Provenance - [FinCEN — support of law enforcement](https://www.fincen.gov/resources/law-enforcement/support-law-enforcement) - [FinCEN — what is BSA data](https://www.fincen.gov/resources/bank-secrecy-act-filing-information/what-bsa-data) - [Treasury — TFI organization](https://home.treasury.gov/about/offices/terrorism-and-financial-intelligence) ## Relationships - **bureau of:** [[wiki/United States Department of the Treasury|United States Department of the Treasury]]. - **component of:** [[wiki/Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence|Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence]]. - **administers:** [[wiki/Bank Secrecy Act|Bank Secrecy Act]]. - **receives:** [[wiki/Bank Secrecy Act Suspicious Activity Report|BSA Suspicious Activity Reports]] and other statutory reports. - **supports:** [[wiki/Financial Intelligence|Financial Intelligence]], [[wiki/Counterterrorism|Counterterrorism]], regulation, and criminal investigation.