ACCURATE COUNTRY RISK ASSESSMENTS MAY BECOME MORE DIFFICULT IN AFTERMATH OF RESTRICTIONS UPON NEWSGATHERING IMPOSED BY THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

A press release from the Department of Defense advising that there will now be severe restrictions on American reporters working inside the Pentagon is not good news for compliance officers charged with assessing Country Risk for their financial institutions. The Secretary of Defense has stated that even unclassified information cannot be published until and unless it has been cleared by a DOD representative, and judging what can be included in an article will solely be at US Government discretion. This means that some American military activities may not be reported on timely, or not at all.

Current U.S. military operations near Venezuela, which are of vital interest to the Eastern Caribbean states, who are already nervous about recent American immigration and CBI actions, may not be fully publicly disclosed by DOD, and since Country Risk in that region is critical to US correspondent banks which serve those countries, there may be an information gap in the future. 

Military operations of the United States military abroad can have a major effect upon the risk levels which compliance officers assign to specific jurisdictions, and which bankers, and their clients, rely upon to make financial decisions about a wide variety of subjects, including but not limited to lending, funds transfers, account openings, and many other banking functions. Restricting access to details, or even the existence, of American military activities overseas could result in inaccurate Country Risk calculations, which might be relied upon to the damage and detriment of financial institutions. Compliance officers will now be required to access foreign sources, if they want an accurate picture of American military actions abroad that are not publicly known to be in progress or of recent nature.