The Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America on the processing and transfer of Financial Messaging Data from the European Union to the United States for the purposes of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program – TFTP has been binding since 2010 (OJ L 195/5 of 27 July 2010).
Within the framework of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) the United States Department of the Treasury’s (U.S. Treasury Department) is trying to identify, track and pursue terrorists and their financers. Within TFTP the U.S. Treasury Department requires by virtue of law that SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) transfers to it specific files containing financial messaging data which are important for investigation of terrorism. The scope of data requests is limited based on historical analyses of relevant types of messages, geographic analyses and identified terrorism risks. However, the data are not subject of unlimited search, but they are subject to specific searches based on pre-existing information demonstrating a reason to believe that the entity being subject of the search has a nexus to terrorism or its financing. The data transferred within TFTP are complete data from financial transaction records. Such data may include identifying information about the originator and/or recipient of a transaction, including name, address, national identification number and other personal data related to financial messages.
Pursuant to Art. 15 and Art. 16 of the TFTP Agreement any person has the right to address the U.S. Treasury Department with a request for disclosure of his/her data processed within TFTP as well as a request for rectification, erasure or blocking of those data. In connection with this below you will find information on the application procedure required by the TFTP Agreement. The requests must be submitted in English.
