[POSTED BY: PUBLICUS ANONYMOUS ("Oh! That Publicus.") ("Oh! That Anonymous.") INTELLIGENCE N. 269, 24 July 1995 (Vol. 16, N. 15) Publishing since 1980 Editor Olivier Schmidt Intelligence, N. 269, 24 July 1995, p. 11 RONALD K. NOBLE - U.S.A. This time the U.S. Treasury Department hasn't jumped the gun in announcing that Ronald K. Noble, the hard-line Undersecretary for Enforcement at Treasury, was the new chairman of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) set up in Paris by the G-7 group of industrialized nations in 1988. Last year at this time, the Netherlands took over the chair but U.S. Treasury wrongly issued an announcement that Noble was occupying the post. Asked by "Intelligence" for an explanation, Treasury simply stated that it had "made a mistake." Last year in Washington, Noble backed bankers complaining about the several million Currency Transaction Reports (CTR) they were required to file every year. Noble and the banks said that filing was not necessary on deposits by businesses like department, grocery and convenience stores that routinely make fluctuating large deposits in cash, and Treasury intended to slash CTR filings by 30 percent. Critics contend that businesses exempt from CTR filing will quickly be used by criminal organizations to launder their cash. As Undersecretary for Enforcement at Treasury, Noble oversees five of the eight largest federal law enforcement agencies in the U.S.: the Secret Service, U.S. Customs, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which was taken over by Treasury's Office of Financial Enforcement under Noble last year at this time. At the FATF, Noble replaced Leo Verwoerd of the Netherlands on 1 July 1995 and will direct the FATF for one year. Following last year's resolution to "monitor implementation of the forty Recommendations of 1990 by its members," Noble intends to use forceful methods including open criticism in annual FATF reports of non-complying members, followed by written reprimands from the FATF chairman to recidivist member countries, and finally high-level mission visits to the faulty country. Greece has already been criticized twice for its lack of progress in implementing FATF recommendations. .