The Regulatory DataCorp Int'l LLC is principally the creation of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York, but it's also being financially supported by firms such as Merrill Lynch & Co., Citigroup Inc. and UBS PaineWebber Inc.

The company is expected to launch in the next couple of weeks, said a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman. Other companies involved in the venture didn't return phone calls or declined to comment.

According to published reports, Regulatory DataCorp will compile information from public resources including international, federal and local law enforcement records. It will then sell access to the database to other companies so they can screen potential customers. Regulatory DataCorp will be a separate company from its founders, said the Goldman Sachs spokeswoman, who declined to comment further on the venture.

While not unique, the database would be among only a handful in the world performing industrywide customer searches, according to Brian Smith, a partner at law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw in Washington, which specializes in regulatory issues in the financial services marketplace.

"The big difference here is that it is financial services firms doing this and not technology companies," he said.

Since the U.S. Patriot Act was passed by Congress in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, banks and brokerages have been scrambling to comply with rules that require them to "know their customers" prior to allowing them to open accounts.

Richard DeLotto, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., said it makes sense for the firms to work together. "If there's a bad guy working in town, he's going to walk from bank to bank. So it increases the likelihood of catching a money launderer or terrorist," he said.

British banking compliance firm World-Check Inc., which is supported by Swiss banks, gained notoriety when it was discovered in February that it had profiles of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers in its database and had listed them as "high risk." World-Check claims to have about 55,000 individuals listed.

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center is a private organization in New York that charges companies a minimum $7,000 annual fee for alerts and access to information about hacking and cyberterrorism threats.

However, some privacy advocates fear that private industry databases will prevent consumers from reviewing information affecting their ability to use financial services.

"There have been concerns that [other databases] operate under a cloak of secrecy," said Stephen Keating, executive director of The Privacy Foundation in Denver. He said Regulatory DataCorp's database could be more comprehensive than others because it's expected to retrieve information from hundreds of sources worldwide.

The Patriot Act The U.S. Patriot Act requires banks to: Verify the identity of anyone seeking to open an account. Maintain records of the information used to verify a person’s identity. Determine if the person opening the account is on any government-provided lists of known or suspected terrorists or terrorist organizations. Source: Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn.