CIBanco filed a complaint against the US Treasury Department before the Federal Court of the District of Columbia, following accusations against it of facilitating money laundering for criminal organizations.
With this appeal, the Mexican bank seeks to stop the order issued by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at the end of June, which will disconnect it from the US financial system on September 4.
The lawsuit was filed on August 17 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and is docketed as 1:25-cv-02705-TNM. It is addressed to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki.
CIBanco states that the allegations against it violate the Administrative Procedures Act as well as due process under the U.S. Constitution and “without immediate correction, this unlawful order places the bank at risk of insolvency and collapse.”
It alleges that the allegations “could render unusable more than $40 billion of legitimate funds managed by CIBanco on behalf of U.S. interests: pension funds, mutual funds, corporations and U.S. citizens.
“Without an adequate process to prove the falsity of these allegations, CIBanco faces imminent demise,” warns the Mexican financial institution.
It was on June 25 when FinCEN accused CIBanco, Intercam and Vector, which operates as a brokerage house, of being institutions that facilitated money laundering for drug cartels, for an amount totaling at least 46 million 591 thousand dollars.
As a result, the banks and the brokerage firm were to be disconnected from the US financial system on July 21, but on July 9 the Treasury Department announced that the measure would take effect until September 4.
In Mexico, CIBanco, Intercam and Vector are under administrative intervention by the authorities. However, the Mexican government claims that it has not received compelling evidence that the three institutions committed any wrongdoing.
In the lawsuit, CIBanco argues that it “will cease to exist as an international commercial bank due to an erroneous order issued by the Treasury Department under the new authorities to combat opioid trafficking. The bank wholeheartedly supports the U.S. government’s efforts to combat the opioid epidemic and the Mexican drug cartels”.
It points out that most of its business “depends entirely on access to U.S. dollar transactions,” so FinCEN’s accusations endanger “its very existence.”
“In fact, most of CIBanco’s business will be lost before the order’s effective date, as U.S. financial institutions are ceasing operations with CIBanco before the Sept. 4, 2025 deadline.
“CIBanco’s last U.S. correspondent bank recently notified that it will terminate its relationship with CIBanco on August 21, 2025 due to the order, which justifies the urgency of this lawsuit.”
The Mexican bank believes that FinCEN has imposed “the death penalty” on it, all the while acting as “prosecutor, judge and jury.”
https://mexicobusiness.news/finance/news/cibanco-sues-us-treasury-after-us-financial-system-cutoff?tag=finance
