Suspicious activity report

In financial regulation, a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) or Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) is a report made by a financial institution about suspicious or potentially suspicious activity. The criteria to decide when a report must be made varies from country to country but generally is any financial transaction that does not make sense to the financial institution, is unusual for that particular client or appears to be done only for the purpose of hiding or obfuscating a transaction. The report is filed with that country's financial crime enforcement unit, which is typically a specialist agency designed to collect and analyse transactions and report these to relevant law enforcement units. Front line staff in the financial institution have the responsibility to identify transactions that may be suspicious and these are reported to a designated person that is responsible for the reporting the transaction. The financial institution is not allowed to inform the client or the parties to the transaction that a SAR has been lodged.

For example, in the United States, suspicious transaction reports must be reported to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury. In Australia the SAR must be reported to Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), an Australian government agency. Most countries have laws that require financial institutions to report transactions and will have a designated agency to receive these. The agency to which a report is required to be filed for a given country is typically part of the law enforcement or financial regulatory department of that country.

SARs include detailed information about transactions that are or appear to be suspicious. The goal of SAR filings is to help the government identify individuals, groups and organizations involved in fraud, terrorist financing, money laundering, and other crimes.

The purpose of a suspicious activity report is to report known or suspected violations of law or suspicious activity observed by financial institutions subject to the regulations (for example, the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)). In many instances, SARs have been instrumental in enabling law enforcement to initiate or supplement major money laundering or terrorist financing investigations and other criminal cases. Information provided in SAR forms also presents FinCEN with a method of identifying emerging trends and patterns associated with financial crimes. The information about those trends and patterns is vital to law enforcement agencies and provides valuable feedback to financial institutions.

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