Rebuilding Wall Street: Money Probe Puts Strains On Wall Street
The wide-ranging investigation into money-laundering tied to the Sept. 11 attacks has put a big strain on Wall Street legal departments, which have been working overtime to meet demands for trading records and other information.</br></br>In recent weeks, regulators and investigators have inundated securities firms with requests for customer-account documents and other records they believe are vital to tracking down a money trail that could show how various terrorist groups fund their activities. These records include "blue sheets," or trading records, and other types of customer data.</br></br>The large number of requests has some Wall Street firms up in arms, and could make it more difficult for investigators to track down the money trail leading to terrorist groups.</br></br>Securities firms grouse that they have received requests for money-trail information from "eight or nine different agencies," including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the National Association of Securities Dealers. "We're getting the same requests from five different entities," says a lawyer from a major Wall Street firm.</br></br>So last week, federal officials and Wall Street firms sought to iron out their differences. At a series of meetings -- one at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the other in the New York offices of Prudential Securities, a unit of Prudential Insurance Co. of America -- investigators agreed to better coordinate their data requests to prevent duplication, and Wall Street firms have pledged their full cooperation in the probe.