36 former military and civilian national security leaders sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs urging members to end anonymous shell companies.
Though it may seem fanciful, there is a powerful tool that is tailor made for simultaneously combating North Korean nukes, Russian aggression, Chinese influence, and Iranian maleficence. This tool is beneficial ownership. In practice, existing beneficial ownership rules in the United States require compliance departments to collect, verify, and store data on clients, all at a cost to the consumer.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the U.S. Treasury Department unveiled sanctions against five Iranian individuals Tuesday for providing “ballistic missile-related technical expertise to Yemen’s Huthis,” the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition warned that the United States has failed to equip itself with the tools to enforce those sanctions.
Quotes from prominent national security experts explaining the problems with anonymous shell companies.
Anonymous shell companies are the vehicle of choice for a wide variety of bad actors. Drug cartels and human trafficking operations have long understood the benefits of corporate secrecy to launder money. Terror groups have learned these lessons, and today illicit financing and evading sanctions are as much a part of their strategy as any bombing or attack. Corrupt leaders in nations around the world steal public funds to prop up their regimes, undermine democratic institutions and ideals, and create internal and regional instability.
With every passing week we have new evidence of the threat that Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy poses to our democracy, our national security, and the entire liberal world order. Putin’s regime—something akin to an organized crime ring masquerading as a state—has looted the wealth of Russia, subjugated its people, attacked neighboring former republics of the USSR, annexed Crimea, and hacked the electoral process in the United States and other Western democracies.
