Belgium says had no control over US bank searches

BRUSSELS, June 26 (Reuters) Belgium's central bank said it had no control over searches by US officials of thousands of private records held by a Brussels-based international bank cooperative.

US media revealed last week that since September 11, 2001 the US Treasury Department had been tapping into the records of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) for evidence of potential activity by terror groups.

Seeking to deflect criticism that it had not done enough to protect those records, the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) said in a statement yesterday that its role as head of the oversight body for SWIFT was limited.

''The monitoring of SWIFT's activities that do not affect financial stability is not a matter for the oversight group and therefore the US Treasury subpoenas of SWIFT were outside the purview of central bank oversight,'' the statement said.

''Moreover, the oversight group does not have the authority either to approve or prohibit SWIFT's compliance,'' it added.

SWIFT is owned and controlled by nearly 8,000 commercial banks in 20 countries. The U.S. Treasury subpoenaed data from it to get information on wire transfers and cash movements into and out of the United States.

US Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday defended the secret programme, run in conjunction with the CIA, as a legal and ''absolutely essential'' weapon in the war on terror, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper first reported on the financial tracking programme last week in a story which Cheney said hampered US security efforts.

Reuters SI DS1253