FinCEN will not pursue BSA enforcement against US banks serving Venezuela until 29 January 2027. The three conditions, and the duties that do not change.
Table of contents
The FinCEN Venezuela enforcement policy, issued on 27 July 2026, commits the regulator not to bring Bank Secrecy Act enforcement against US financial institutions providing authorised financial services in Venezuela. The window closes on 29 January 2027 and three eligibility conditions apply. No filing duty is suspended: due diligence, suspicious activity reporting and sanctions screening all continue.
- FinCEN will not take supervisory action, cite a violation of law, or pursue enforcement over BSA requirements for authorised financial services provided in Venezuela between 27 July 2026 and 29 January 2027.
- Relief is conditional: current compliance with an applicable BSA compliance program requirement, no final BSA enforcement action in the prior 24 months, and continued compliance with OFAC sanctions rules.
- The statement was issued in consultation with the IRS and the staffs of the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC, the NCUA and the OCC.
- It sits on top of OFAC's Venezuela authorisations, of which FinCEN names two: General License 57 of 14 April 2026 and General License 60 of 25 June 2026, the latter expiring three months before the FinCEN window closes.
- Nothing in the package suspends suspicious activity reporting, customer due diligence, record-keeping or sanctions screening obligations.
What did FinCEN actually commit to?
The FinCEN Venezuela enforcement policy, published on 27 July 2026, covers financial services provided to persons or entities in Venezuela. The agency commits not to take any supervisory action, including citing a violation of law, and not to pursue any enforcement action against a US financial institution over Bank Secrecy Act requirements arising from authorised services there.
The window is fixed: 27 July 2026 through 29 January 2027. FinCEN issued the statement in consultation with the Internal Revenue Service and with the staffs of four federal banking agencies: the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC, the NCUA and the OCC. The document calls them the Agencies, and the consultation matters, because those bodies run most BSA examinations.
The purpose is stated plainly. Institutions exercising reasonable care are, in FinCEN's words, "not penalized for actions other than for knowing, willful, or intentional violations". The trigger was the pair of earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on 24 June 2026, recorded by the US Geological Survey at magnitude 7.5 west of Catia La Mar and magnitude 7.2 east of San Felipe.
| Instrument | Issued | Runs to | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| OFAC General License 57 | 14 April 2026 | No stated expiry | Authorises financial services involving Banco Central de Venezuela, Banco de Venezuela, Banco Digital de los Trabajadores and Banco del Tesoro |
| OFAC General License 60 | 25 June 2026 | 12:01 a.m. EDT, 23 October 2026 | Authorises transactions related to earthquake relief otherwise prohibited by 31 CFR part 591 |
| FinCEN statement of enforcement policy | 27 July 2026 | 29 January 2027 | Commits FinCEN not to cite or pursue BSA violations for authorised services in Venezuela |
Who qualifies for the relief, and for how long?
Three conditions gate eligibility for the FinCEN Venezuela enforcement policy, and an institution must satisfy all of them. The clean-record test is the sharpest edge: a consent order signed in 2025 removes the benefit entirely, with no partial credit for remediation already delivered.
| Condition | The exact test | Who fails it |
|---|---|---|
| Current compliance | Complies with an applicable BSA compliance program requirement and keeps making reasonable efforts | Institutions carrying an open, examiner-cited program deficiency, even with no final action |
| Clean record | No final enforcement action with FinCEN or its primary federal regulator in the prior 24 months involving BSA or similar requirements | Institutions under or recently released from a BSA consent order |
| Sanctions compliance | Remains compliant with applicable OFAC administered regulations and authorisations | Any institution processing outside the terms of a general license |
The reasonable-efforts test is weighed against the government's interests in rapidly providing humanitarian relief and in rapidly promoting financial stability and economic recovery in the region. That second limb is broader than earthquake aid, and it does work later in the timeline.
General License 60 authorises earthquake relief transactions under the Venezuela Sanctions Regulations at 31 CFR part 591 until 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on 23 October 2026. General License 57 authorises financial services involving four named Venezuelan banks, entities they own 50 percent or more of, and individuals blocked solely as Government of Venezuela officials under Executive Order 13884, while excluding anyone on the Specially Designated Nationals list. Neither licence unblocks blocked property.
The definition of financial services in General License 57 is the most operationally decisive part of the package. It expressly enumerates US dollar correspondent account services, ACH and wire transfers, remittances, payroll and pension payments, and card and digital wallet transactions. That is the list a bank actually needs when it is deciding whether a corridor can be rebuilt.
What does this change for your BSA obligations?
Almost nothing changes at the control level: the FinCEN Venezuela enforcement policy is BSA supervisory forbearance, a promise not to enforce rather than a change to the underlying rule, and it exempts nothing in 31 CFR Chapter X. General License 57 says as much in its own text: nothing in it relieves any person "from compliance with the requirements of other U.S. laws", and it names the Bank Secrecy Act, the USA PATRIOT Act and FinCEN regulations.
| Obligation | Status | What actually shifts |
|---|---|---|
| Customer due diligence and beneficial ownership | Unchanged | Only the enforcement consequence of a good-faith gap found during a relief surge |
| Enhanced due diligence and PEP screening | Unchanged | Exposure rises; relief flows run through the channels FIN-2019-A002 names |
| Suspicious activity reporting | Unchanged | Nothing; knowing failures sit outside the stated purpose of the relief |
| Sanctions screening | Unchanged | It becomes a precondition of the BSA relief, not just a parallel duty |
| Record-keeping | Unchanged | Evidence of what you knew at processing time becomes the defence |
Take those in turn. Customer due diligence and beneficial ownership collection run exactly as before; what moves is the enforcement consequence of a good-faith gap found during a relief surge, not the standard you are held to. On enhanced due diligence and politically exposed persons, the exposure arguably rises. FinCEN's updated advisory on widespread public corruption in Venezuela, FIN-2019-A002, has not been withdrawn. Its red flags on shell company transfers and government contract abuse describe the channels relief money travels through.
Suspicious activity reporting is untouched. The commitment covers supervisory and enforcement action, not the duty to file. A knowing, willful or intentional failure sits outside what FinCEN says the commitment is intended to protect, though that limit appears in the statement's purpose language rather than in the three enumerated conditions, which is weaker footing than an express exclusion.
Venezuela sanctions compliance now carries double weight. OFAC applies strict liability, condition three makes OFAC compliance a precondition, and General License 57 excludes designated persons, so a screening miss costs both exposures at once. On record-keeping, the two licences differ. General License 57 lets an institution rely on the originator or the beneficiary of a funds transfer. General License 60 is narrower and runs to the originator only, extended to US registered money transmitters. Either way, reliance holds only while the institution does not know or have reason to know otherwise.
What is still uncertain about the FinCEN Venezuela enforcement policy?
Four things are unresolved, and each shifts risk back onto the institution. The first is the standard itself. Reasonable efforts is undefined in the statement, with no examples and no safe harbour, so an examiner retains discretion over whether your effort qualified.
The second is a date mismatch. General License 60 expires on 23 October 2026, while the FinCEN commitment runs to 29 January 2027. The forbearance outlives the earthquake relief authorisation, though not the economic recovery rationale that General License 57 and the statement's own purpose language also rest on. The exposure is narrower than the dates suggest, but the two corridors have to be tracked separately.
The third is scope. The statement closes by noting that the commitment does not apply to statutes or regulations except as specifically addressed. It binds FinCEN and, through consultation, the federal banking agencies. It does not bind state supervisors, the Department of Justice, or any foreign regulator whose rules reach a group subsidiary. A New York branch can therefore sit inside the federal commitment and still answer to its state regulator for the same payment.
The fourth is durability. A statement of enforcement policy is not a rule. It was not adopted through notice and comment, it is not codified, and it can be narrowed or withdrawn before January. Watch three things: whether OFAC renews or replaces General License 60 in October, whether FinCEN issues a successor statement before 29 January 2027, and whether either agency narrows the authorised-services perimeter in the meantime. If nothing is issued, the default is a return to ordinary enforcement exposure on 30 January 2027, with no transition period.
How does this compare with FinCEN's earlier forbearance?
FinCEN rarely promises in advance not to enforce. When it has, the promise usually covered one filing obligation rather than an entire jurisdiction. The comparison below sets this statement against the two most relevant precedents and shows what is unusual about it.
| FinCEN forbearance | Date | Scope | Conditions attached |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statement on enforcement of the Bank Secrecy Act | 18 August 2020 | Framework covering all BSA enforcement | None; sets out the factors FinCEN weighs |
| Beneficial ownership reporting non-enforcement | 27 February 2025 | One filing duty, all reporting companies | None stated beyond a pending interim rule |
| Venezuela enforcement policy | 27 July 2026 | One jurisdiction, all BSA requirements | Three, including a 24 month clean record |
The 2025 beneficial ownership announcement paused penalties for a single report, and the 2020 statement on BSA enforcement set out weighing factors rather than a promise. The FinCEN Venezuela enforcement policy reaches every BSA requirement, but only for one country, only for authorised services, and only for institutions that pass a conduct test. That combination of broad subject matter and narrow eligibility is the novel part. It also lands in a year when the federal banking agencies have been rewriting how BSA program failures are cited, which raises the value of a documented position.
How should compliance teams respond?
Start by deciding, in writing, whether you qualify. Check the 24 month enforcement history for the legal entity and its primary federal regulator, confirm which OFAC authorisation covers each corridor you intend to run, and record the answer with a date. Institutions that fail the clean-record test should assume normal enforcement exposure and calibrate accordingly.
Then hold the controls steady. Keep suspicious activity reporting, screening and due diligence at full strength, tag Venezuela relief payments so they can be extracted for a later examination, and diarise 23 October 2026 as the point where General License 60 lapses. Treat the relief as protection against honest error under time pressure, not as permission to run thinner checks.
Zyphe produces an exportable audit trail with per-region data residency, so a payment processed under time pressure can be reconstructed for a later examination. Identity is verified through an NFC chip read to ICAO 9303 and eIDAS standards with two-step liveness and no image upload, and the resulting data is split across many nodes so no single node holds a complete record. Teams rebuilding a corridor under a deadline can book a demo to see the AML screening workflow and sanctions screening run end to end.
The bottom line
Treasury has removed a specific deterrent: the fear that processing legitimate relief payments into a heavily sanctioned jurisdiction will later be read as a program failure. It has not removed a single control obligation, and it has attached a conduct test that excludes precisely the institutions carrying recent enforcement history. For a compliance team, the work is to document eligibility once, keep screening and reporting at full strength, and track two expiry dates rather than one. Teams that read the FinCEN Venezuela enforcement policy as licence to relax controls will find the limit on knowing failures waiting for them.
Cited sources
- FinCEN, Statement of Enforcement Policy in Support of Venezuela's Economic Recovery and Earthquake Relief Efforts, 27 July 2026
- OFAC, Venezuela General License No. 60, 25 June 2026
- OFAC, Venezuela General License No. 57, 14 April 2026
- FinCEN Advisory FIN-2019-A002, updated advisory on widespread public corruption in Venezuela
- FinCEN, not issuing fines or penalties in connection with beneficial ownership information reporting deadlines, 27 February 2025
- FinCEN, Statement on Enforcement of the Bank Secrecy Act, 18 August 2020
- US Geological Survey, M 7.5 earthquake, 17 km W of Catia La Mar, Venezuela, 24 June 2026
- US Geological Survey, M 7.2 earthquake, 21 km ENE of San Felipe, Venezuela, 24 June 2026
Michelangelo Frigo (Co-Founder at Zyphe) Michelangelo Frigo is a privacy and identity infrastructure expert and co-founder of Zyphe.