Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Spitzer and SARs

Phil Carter reviews the laws pursuant to which banks make suspicious activity reports to the government and concludes:

In my opinion, what Spitzer was doing qualifies as SAR-reportable stuff. His multiple transactions likely popped up on the banks’ radar because they had their system calibrated to look for stuff like this. The bank put his identity and position together with these transactions, and suspected something fishy. Once they did that, they had a legal duty to report the transactions. From there, I think the FBI was justified in pursuing this as a public corruption matter. This inquiry found some criminal conduct. Obviously, there’s a decision of prosecutorial discretion at that point — but the feds are on firm ground however they go.

Last night, on CNN, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz (for whom Spitzer clerked during the Von Bulow trial) was bloviating about how this whole investigation is improper because these statutes were really designed to go after really bad people like drug dealers and organized crime leaders. Sorry professor — that’s both wrong and irrelvant. The financial crimes statutes also trace their lineage to successive waves of legislation dealing with political corruption — something which is at issue here. But the original intent behind the statutes here is really irrelevant. They’re on the books; they’re the law. I realize that Prof. Dershowitz would like the law to be something different, but you go to the Mayflower Hotel with the law you have, not necessarily the law you would like to have . . .