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tas ij ii^aw wcc^ ui aiiieuuiium, wxiitii lias au- iviuscow.Bank Account Secrecy Under FireWASHINGTON (AP) - The administration said Friday it opposes any restraints on its nearly unlimited power to peek at the spending records of people with bank accounts.Top law enforcement officials from two government departments said suchrestrictions would sharply slow the fights against white-collar and organized crime.Sen. John V. Tunney, D-Calif., said he wants to require federal agents to obtain court permission before they can examine or copy bank records.Under present law, the Internal Revenue Service, the Treasury Department and other agencies may view such records as long as banks don’t object.At a Senate hearing. Assistant Treasury Secretary Eugene R o s s i d e s said therp is no danger that the privacy of individual citizens would be jeopardized.Rossides said proposals by Tunneyand Sen. Charles McC. Mathias “wouldshield drug traffickers, organized crime figures and white collar criminals.Tunney’s bill, for which he testified at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, would permit examination of bank records when the account holder agrees, when a court subpoena is issued the account holder or if the government can show in court there is probably cause to believe a crime has been committed.Tunney said protection of bank ac-counts is no different than requiring search warrants when police think they may find evidence in someone’s home.William S. Lynch, chief of the Justice Department’s organized crime section, said there is no precedent for considering bank account information the sole property of the account holder.Lynch cited a hypothetical kidnaping in which a ransom has been paid, and the kidnaper had deposited the money in a bank aefcount. He said the investigation would be stymied either through time delays or the need to notify the criminal that the FBI was interested in his finances.Dh;ofs;PisiGMIrFininphprto
Newspaper Details
San Antonio Express and News
San Antonio, Texas, US
Sat, Aug 12, 1972
Page 15
Full Page
Clipped by
Madison H.
NA, 25 May 2023
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