More than 90 national security experts sent a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services, urging members to end the incorporation of anonymous shell companies.
A group of international nongovernmental organizations wrote to Ranking Member Patrick McHenry and Chairwoman Maxine Waters to declare their support for the Corporate Transparency Act.
A group of investors representing more than $1 trillion assets under management signed a letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, urging FASB to reconsider the Exposure Draft and support country-by-country reporting.
On May 7th and 8th, 2019, AFSCME, the Emerging Markets Investors Alliance, the FACT Coalition, Oxfam, and the Transparency & Accountability Initiative hosted a webinar on the harms of inadequate disclosures of corporate tax practices. Moderated by Gary Kalman, Executive Director of FACT Coalition, the webinar featured an expert panel that included, Ty Gellasch, founder of Myrtle Makena and former Senior Counsel to the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations, Nicholas Lusiani, Senior Advisor at Oxfam America, Robert M. Wilson, Jr., investment officer and research analyst at MFS Investment Management, and Richard Phillips, former senior policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Anonymous companies facilitate everything from corruption and money laundering to transnational organized crime, sanctions evasion, and terrorism — all of which directly harm U.S. foreign policy interests. Such companies have been used to divert from their intended purposes U.S. security and overseas development funds into the hands of those who seek to do the United States harm, and they can help fund the very insurgents and terrorists U.S. troops are fighting.
Numerous stories have been written exposing how anonymous companies are used around the world for criminal purposes, including in media reports stemming from the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, and Lux Leaks; the Russian and Troika Laundromat episodes; Global Witness reports, The Great Rip Off and Hidden Menace; and many more.
In addition to the examples, there is mounting evidence showing the widespread use of anonymous companies to launder money and allow dangerous actors to escape accountability and that the United States is a prime secrecy jurisdiction.
