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.
It is time for Congress to start fighting for something larger than its component pieces. New beneficial ownership legislation, and new anti-corruption laws in general, should be framed as a pillar of a grand struggle to restore American global leadership, expand and spread American prosperity, and create space for new international opportunities with countries that want to play by the rules.
In the past few years, journalists and civil society activists have begun documenting globalized corruption on an unprecedented scale, from the Panama and Paradise Papers leaks and collaborative initiatives like the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project to the countless individuals and organizations working at great personal risk in regions of marginal interest to mainstream international audiences. A special mention should be made of Forbidden Stories, a sadly necessary project which enables journalists to “swarm” the investigations of slain colleagues, ensuring that their killers’ attempt to silence them backfires spectacularly.
At first look, the banking community should be pleased with a bill scheduled for a vote this week in the House Financial Services Committee. Several provisions aim to reduce the compliance costs of financial institutions when trying to meet the requirements of anti-money-laundering rules.
Yet first looks can be deceiving.
A previous version of the bill, a discussion draft examined by the committee in November, included virtually all of the current provisions, such as incentives for innovation, increased information sharing and feedback from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and streamlining of suspicious activity reporting. But one provision missing from the latest draft of the bill is a section to require Fincen to collect beneficial ownership information at the time of corporate formation and share that information with financial institutions and law enforcement. Considering Fincen’s new customer due diligence rule, which requires banks to identify beneficial owners of certain corporate bank accounts, this provision would have reduced compliance costs and potential liability should banks find themselves at odds with their regulators over AML compliance.
House Republicans this week axed a key passage in a bill that is deemed crucial in the fight to stop kleptocrats, drug traffickers and terrorists from laundering money through the US.
The original legislation would have forced anyone setting up a company in the US to tell authorities who the actual owner was. Law enforcement, anti-corruption groups and national security experts say this is essential in fighting crimes that range from child trafficking to Russian election hacking; America’s opaque incorporation laws can otherwise make it impossible to find out who is behind a company benefiting from such crimes.
Trillions of dollars in capital flows into the United States annually, and trillions of dollars in payments are cleared through New York daily. No one knows exactly whom the funds belong to, where they are held, or how they are deployed. No one knows because the U.S. government does not track the money — but it could if it wanted to. What is known is that Russia, other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and China are the primary drivers of non-transparent capital flows worldwide.
Anonymous companies are ubiquitous in most money-laundering schemes, and in the allegations against Trump campaign associates Paul Manafort and Richard Gates. Shell companies are formed with no record of the true owners, and because they are so easy to set up — especially if you’re a lawyer — you can easily layer dozens of them to confuse investigators and hide dirty money.
