The U.S. is the easiest place in the world for a criminal, terrorist, tax cheat, or kleptocrat to open an anonymous shell company to launder their money with impunity. Anonymous corporations are great ways to hide money and other assets — they can hold a bank account or buy a yacht. Criminals often layer anonymous corporations, with one owning another and so on, making it even harder for law enforcement to “trace the money” and figure out who is directing the company’s activity. It’s time to ending the use of anonymous shell companies as vehicles for illicit activity by requiring that the true owners of U.S. companies be disclosed at the time of formation and updated upon any change.
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.”
“The FACT Coalition warmly welcomes this proposed rule, and we are glad to see Treasury’s FinCEN implementing the plain language of this landmark beneficial ownership disclosure law,” said Ian Gary, Executive Director of the FACT Coalition. “These rules, along with the earlier releases this week of the White House’s Strategy on Countering Corruption and the notice of proposed rulemaking from FinCEN aimed at tackling systemic money laundering vulnerabilities in the U.S. real estate sector are a clear demonstration of an emerging American commitment to tackling global corruption, which corrodes democratic governance both at home and abroad.”
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.
Casey Michel’s new book, “American Kleptocracy” (released Nov. 23), is an investigative look into how the U.S. built “the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known” and how this system has “infected American politics, threatened US national security and gouged local communities.”
Operating in financial secrecy, bad actors are free to profit from environmental degradation, and in doing so undermine the global fight against climate change. As global leaders make new commitments this week at COP26, it’s time that politicians promise to shine a light on global financial secrecy, particularly the use of anonymous shell companies, as a crucial climate reform.
31 Civil Society Organizations Send Letter to FinCEN in Support of Strong Beneficial Ownership Implementation
