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.
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,”
In light of new sanctions against Russia, the FACT Coalition urged Congress to approve $118.2 million in emergency and discretionary funding this week for the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
Inadequate funding for the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) jeopardizes the enforcement of new U.S. sanctions in light of President Putin’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine.
FACT Government Affairs Director Erica Hanichak spoke before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control on ways legislators can deny drug traffickers and the corrupt officials they work with access to the U.S. financial system.
While the White House considers and implements immediate actions to aid Ukraine, it must also pursue structural U.S. anti-money laundering reforms to increase the effectiveness of targeted U.S. sanctions and to end the weaponization of U.S. legal and financial systems against democratic and open societies.
The FACT Coalition welcomed the White House announcement of a “multilateral Transatlantic task force” to identify and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs.
