31 U.S.C. § 5311 — Declaration of purpose

Except for section 5315, this subchapter is intended to: (1) require reports or records highly useful in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations, risk assessments, and proceedings, and in intelligence or counterintelligence activities, including efforts to protect against terrorism; (2) prevent money laundering and terrorist financing through reasonably designed, risk-based programs at financial institutions; (3) help track money from criminal activity or intended for criminal or terrorist activity; (4) assess money-laundering, terrorist-financing, tax-evasion, and fraud risks to financial institutions, products, and services to protect the United States financial system and national security; and (5) create information-sharing frameworks among financial institutions, their agents and service providers, regulators, financial-institution associations, Treasury, and law-enforcement authorities to identify, stop, and apprehend money launderers and terrorist financiers.