> The SARs are largely kept under wraps. Customer service representatives might not know if such a report was filed (or anything about its contents), which may be why it can be hard for them to explain account closures to customers. “It is held to a high level of confidentiality, and it is a crime to disclose that a SAR has been filed,” Ms. Cohen Levin of Sullivan & Cromwell said.
Unfortunately if you or a transaction of yours "looks suspicious" or show up on any of the various AML/anti-terror lists/filters - which are full of false positives and nonsense - BY LAW we cant tell you why your account was closed. It sucks, people are rightfully angry. It doesn't seem worth it to me - if you are actually doing BadThings and your account gets closed, i'm sure you know why. Being opaque is really not providing much benefit to law enforcement here, at the cost of massive inconvenience for many.
Now, banks are also guilty of hiding behind these laws for non-mandatory account closure reasons - when they have internally decided they dont want you as a customer for whatever reason. That also sucks IMHO. Perhaps changing the law would remove the plausible deniability in these situations and lead to more transparency.