BSA/AML Advisory, Compliance, and Enforcement

Morrison Foerster’s global Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)/anti-money laundering (AML) practice offers clients assistance on issues related to regulatory compliance and risk management, internal and regulatory investigations and enforcement defense, and transactional and third-party due diligence. Our clients include financial institutions, financial services companies (including FinTech companies and digital asset firms), multinational companies, boards of directors, and executives.

For almost 20 years, our team have offered clients a multidisciplinary and cross-trained approach, working collaboratively as one BSA/AML team. This approach provides our investigations and litigation lawyers with deep knowledge of BSA/AML subject matter and gives our financial services lawyers critical investigatory experience, allowing our team to represent our clients efficiently, effectively, and holistically. Our strength is that from this multidisciplinary and cross-trained group, we can assemble the right team for a client’s needs – from a complex investigation or litigation requiring a range of skillsets to a more focused issue requiring knowledge of a specialized subject matter.

Who We Are

Our team is spearheaded by leading authorities on BSA/AML regulation, compliance, and enforcement, including the most recent former chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS) and one of the only former directors of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in private practice. This is particularly helpful in our many anti-financial crime representations that involve the well-known connection between alleged AML and sanctions violations. Our group also includes former Federal Reserve and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lawyers, as well as decades of private-sector experience advising clients on BSA/AML issues.

Our BSA/AML team is highly integrated throughout the firm’s practice areas, including Financial Services, Investigations + White Collar Defense, National Security, Global Ethics + Compliance, Privacy + Data Security, and Capital Markets practices, among others. As a result, we provide thoughtful, creative, and practical solutions to address our clients’ most pressing concerns regarding regulatory issues, transactions, disputes, and investigations, as well as providing legal assistance with their day-to-day operations.