54 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
54 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
The Wall Street Journal
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9/20/93
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Seizing Wire Transfers
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The government can intercept international wire transfers without a
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warrant, a federal appeals court said, further expanding the scope of
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scope of civil forfeiture laws.
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The ruling is apparently the first at the appellate level to address
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forfeitures involving international wire tranfers, in which bank
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credits usually are shuffled from a sending bank, to a receiving
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bank.
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In the case before the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,
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drug-enforcement agents seized $12 million at intermediary banks in
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New York. The government had a warrant to seize only some of the
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money, all of which was on its way to Colombia.
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The defendants, 17 Columbian companies that say they are clothing
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exporters, said the government violated constitutional protections
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against unreasonable searches and seizures. The companies also said
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the government broke federal privacy laws by subpoenaing their
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financial records.
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A three-judge panel of the appeals court in New York, however, ruled
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that electronic fund transfers happen so quickly that the government
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can act without a warrant. The court also said the Right of Financial
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Privacy Act didn't apply, the court said, because no special device,
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such as a wiretap, is used in seizing a wire transfer.
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Montgomery Blair Sibley, a Miami attorney for some of the defendants,
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said the government should have been blocked because it had
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insufficient evidence to seize his client's money. He said a decision
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hasn't been made on whether to ask the full appeals court to
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reconsider the decision.
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(U.S. vs. Daccarett et al., Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,
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92-6229)
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