Money laundering fuels everything from terror finance and sanctions evasion to human trafficking and corruption. However, experts warn that our anti-money laundering efforts are on the brink of failure, as law enforcement only interdicts less than one-half of one percent of the trillions of dollars laundered each year. We need a new approach to addressing money laundering and the dangerous threats to our safety and security from the crimes funded through illicit finance.
In response to President Biden’s 2023 proposed budget, the FACT Coalition welcomed substantial increases in funding for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI).
Last week, the UK Parliament passed long-promised reform to provide a window into the opaque British real estate market. This reform – desperately needed following countless exposés about financial abuses in the UK real estate sector, including recent revelations in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – will have critical implications for deterring and investigating economic crime and sanctions evasion. As the U.S. works with other countries to pursue multilateral sanctions against Russia, it must follow the UK and expeditiously advance its own rules to improve transparency in the U.S. real estate sector.
The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition is calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to address the undisclosed presence of possible illicit financial flows in private investment markets. Without further action from the SEC, these flows may enrich and embolden potential adversaries, such as Putin’s regime, and eventually destabilize U.S. and global financial markets. Meanwhile, the failure to identify these flows undermines current sanctions against Russian oligarchs, and may jeopardize future tools that the U.S. might wield against aggressive governments.
Requiring private fund advisers to conduct and report basic customer due diligence is key for defending U.S. financial markets from bad and corrupt actors.
The tools that Congress and the White House commit to Ukraine’s fight for independence and democracy must not be undermined by failings in our own institutions.
FACT’s Erica Hanichak is quoted in Politico: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shines a spotlight on what we already know — kleptocrats and criminals have manipulated the chinks in the armor protecting Western financial systems in order to safeguard their own ill-gotten gains,”
