The National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) sent a letter to the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy in support of the Corporate Transparency Act. The letter can be downloaded here.
Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the world is once again polarized between two competing visions for how to organize society. On one side are countries such as the United States, which are founded on respect for the inviolable rights of the individual and governed by rule of law. On the other side are countries where state power is concentrated in the hands of a single person or clique, accountable only to itself and oiled by corruption.
Alarmingly, while Washington has grown ambivalent in recent years about the extent to which America should encourage the spread of democracy and human rights abroad, authoritarian regimes have become increasingly aggressive and creative in attempting to export their own values against the United States and its allies. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian rulers have worked assiduously to weaponize corruption as an instrument of foreign policy, using money in opaque and illicit ways to gain influence over other countries, subvert the rule of law and otherwise remake foreign governments in their own kleptocratic image.
In this respect, the fight against corruption is more than a legal and moral issue; it has become a strategic one — and a battleground in a great power competition.
Yet corruption is not only one of the most potent weapons wielded by America’s authoritarian rivals, it is also, in many cases, what sustains these regimes in power and is their Achilles’ heel.
Anonymous companies are behind just about every financial crime. They are the vehicle of choice for laundering money obtained through illicit activity. Schemes involving terror financing and the trafficking of drugs, illegal weapons, and humans all use anonymous companies to move money, fund operations, and allow bad actors to escape with the proceeds of their crimes and impunity.
The pervasive use of secret shell and front companies also impacts the broader economy. As such, more and more businesses are speaking out.
Testimony, reports, and independent assessments all find that anonymous companies are a threat to global peace and security and undermine our ability to keep dangerous actors from accessing our financial system.
We need a tax code that creates an even playing field between large multinational corporations and small and domestic businesses, which means ending the ability of the former to engage in offshore shell games.
Quotes from prominent economic experts explaining the incentive for companies to shift activity offshore in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
