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.
The Administration must accelerate its efforts on AML by fully implementing U.S. anonymous entity beneficial ownership transparency rules and advancing long-overdue regulatory overhauls on U.S. real estate and private investment fund markets within the coming year.
Ian Gary, executive director of the FACT Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes corporate transparency, said in an email that the new rule “will protect our financial system and small businesses from the criminal abuse of anonymous shell companies.”
Ahead of COP27, the U.S. can certainly point proudly to its historic investments of hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy. An additional way for the Biden administration to bolster its climate policy is by finishing the job on a slew of anti-corruption reforms.
The bipartisan ENABLERS Act, which would put an end to the abuse of US markets by kleptocrats and international criminals that is aided by certain legal, administrative and financial professionals, is officially headed to a conference committee later this year as part of the must-pass annual defense bill.
The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, founded in 2011, spent nearly a decade producing investigative reports, lobbying legislators and building a coalition with interest groups such as Friends of the Earth and Polaris.
On October 6, following the release of the first final rule to implement the landmark Corporate Transparency Act, the FACT Coalition hosted a private civil society roundtable conversation with senior Treasury Department officials to discuss progress in improving and strengthening U.S. anti-money laundering and anti-corruption safeguards.
