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.
Congress should approve a budget that meets the administration’s request to increase FinCEN’s resources to $191 million to enable the agency to minimize the U.S. role in global corruption, both by modernizing the U.S. anti-money laundering framework and by implementing the landmark Corporate Transparency Act
PBS Frontline quotes FACT’s Executive Director, Ian Gary, and Government Affairs Director, Erica Hanichak
FACT’s Erica Hanichak is quoted in the Associated Press: “It is imperative that Congress fill its oversight and appropriations role to aid the administration in denying financial safe haven, not only to tax evaders, but also to drug traffickers, human rights abusers, kleptocrats, terror financiers and sanctions dodgers.”
FACT Government Affairs Director Erica Hanichak spoke before the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee in a hearing on the Pandora Papers. In her oral testimony, she stressed that Congress must fulfill its role in denying financial safe haven to tax evaders, drug traffickers, human rights abusers, kleptocrats, terror financiers, and sanctions dodgers.
On December 6, the Brookings Institution, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Center for European Policy Analysis, the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group, the FACT Coalition, and the Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption initiative will co-host a seminar on the fight against corruption and its relationship to advancing democracy and addressing democratic backsliding globally.
The $11 trillion U.S. private investment industry represents a gaping hole in the U.S. anti-money laundering framework and makes the U.S. an attractive destination for illicit financial flows, according to a joint report released today by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, Global Financial Integrity, and the Transparency International U.S. Office.
