From The Post-Standard “In a New York minute”
January 28, 2005

Some Arab-American-owned businesses are complaining that their banks are telling them to take their business elsewhere, The Buffalo News reported Thursday.

The businesses that are complaining are ones that do a lot of cash business, the News reported. They say banks are discriminating against them solely because of their names and ancestry during a time of heightened fear of terrorism.

“I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never done anything wrong, and they make me feel like I’ve done something wrong,” Abdul-salam Shuaibee, a Buffalo grocery owner, told the paper.

Banks say they are reacting to tighter federal enforcement of laws aimed at tracking large cash transactions. They say the issue isn’t who owns accounts, but how they’re being used.