Belgium Angered By US Monitoring Of Transactions

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

28 June 2006

Following the publication of a New York Times report which revealed that the US authorities had been monitoring international financial transactions as part of their fight against terrorist activity, the Belgian government is seeking advice on whether such actions (as they pertained to Belgian residents or entities) were legal.

The Central Intelligence Agency program was designed to monitor financial transaction data passed between banks over a system known as SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), and at a hastily-convened press conference in Washington D.C. on Friday, Stuart Levey, Under Secretary for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, defended the program and condemned those who leaked its existence to the media.

"The terrorists we are pursuing are deadly serious and take every precaution to keep their plans and methods to themselves," Levey stated.

"We cannot expect to continue disrupting their activities if our most valuable programs are exposed on the front page of our newspapers," he added.

Levey claimed that the program, known unofficially as 'following the money,' is one of the most effective tools at the disposal of the US government to identify and find terrorists.

"If a terrorist operative that you're watching sends or receives money from another person, you know that there's a link between the two. Money trails don't lie," he explained.

"And, to wire money through a bank, a person needs to provide a name, address, and account number – exactly the kind of concrete leads that that can move an investigation forward and allow us to take action," he added.

The US Treasury has stated that SWIFT is exempt from US laws restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution.

Speaking to the International Herald Tribune on Monday, a spokesman for Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt confirmed that the Justice Department had been asked to examine the legality of the US action.

"We need to to ask what are the legal frontiers in this case and whether it is right that a US civil servant could look at a private transaction without the approval of a Belgian judge," he explained.

The European Commission has so far declined to intervene in the matter, stating that there does not appear to be any European legislation covering this type of transfer.

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