WASHINGTON—An anti-money laundering bill offers a suite of updates to the current AML regime, a new report indicates.
It would decrease unnecessary regulations, target shell companies, raise incentives for whistleblowers, and sweep digital currencies into the definition of “monetary instruments,” stated Vision & Elkins in its analysis of the legislation.
The proposal is called the Improving Laundering Laws and Increasing Comprehensive Information Tracking of Criminal Activity in Shell Holdings Act (or ILLICIT CASH Act).
A team of bipartisan senators, including Republicans Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Tom Cotton (R-AZ) and Democrats Mark Warner (D-VA) and Doug Jones (D-AL), authored the bill.
“By its own terms, the bill seeks to ‘improve coordination among agencies tasked with administering anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism requirements.’ This amounts to an update to the financial laws that, as the Senators highlighted in an op-ed supporting their bill, ‘haven’t been updated comprehensively in decades.’ In particular, the bill is meant to address the fact that the U.S. is ranked second-worst in the world for its high level of secret and offshore financial activities, as ranked by the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index,” stated Vision & Elkins.
Attempts to Limit Reg Burden
The bill’s authors say it attempts to limit the regulatory burden on businesses.
“For example, it instructs regulatory officials to ‘study and determine whether the dollar thresholds’ at 31 U.S.C. 5331 — which requires financial institutions to report cash transactions of $10,000 or more — ‘should be adjusted.’ Any change to this provision would likely lead to an increase in the dollar threshold, which, all things equal, would lessen AML reporting burdens,” Vision & Elkins explained.
Likewise, the Illicit Cash Act instructs the Treasury Secretary “in consultation with Federal law enforcement agencies” to review the current regulatory landscape and “reduce unnecessarily burdensome regulatory requirements.”