Obocon Inc. (OBCN)

[brooklyn1955]

RiseandShine: Just want to clarify that there are companies out there doing this MJ banking already. I know of one that has many clients already on the West Coast and this MUST be a new one to take control over the ticker. This legislation just clears the way for all federal banks to get involved.

The big scary law is the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), a 45-year-old federal statute that outlaws money laundering. FinCEN is the main federal agency enforcing the act. If you’re a bank that wants to accept cash from a business selling a federally illegal substance, you’ve got to get FinCEN’s approval.

FinCEN has given that approval. Sort of. It’s tricky.

In February 2014, the Justice Department and FinCEN issued concurrent guidance documents (you can find them here and here) that created a way for banks and credit unions to bank MRBs without technically running afoul of the Bank Secrecy Act.

But the documents are only guidance; they’re not laws. They don’t legalize money laundering. Rather, they give financial institutions some assurance that FinCEN won’t come after them for handling cannabis-related accounts provided they follow a stringent set of rules.

FinCEN said, essentially, that it will allow banks and credit unions to handle state-legal cannabis cash as long as the banks report it to the agency and conduct extraordinary initial and ongoing due diligence on those clients.