WASHINGTON—NAFCU has joined with dozens of other organizations in urging leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees to include Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)/anti-money laundering (AML) and beneficial ownership reforms in the fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The House-passed NDAA included language from the bipartisan COUNTER Act and Corporate Transparency Act – which includes BSA/AML reforms and creates a beneficial ownership registry. However, efforts from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Ranking Member Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to add an amendment for BSA/AML reforms to the Senate-passed version were not successful.
The letter, sent by the 30 groups – representing financial services, law enforcement, small businesses, and more – specifically called for the inclusion of the Corporate Transparency Act, which the groups argue "offers a bipartisan pathway to modernizing the nation's anti-money laundering laws and closing loopholes that allow the dangerous manipulation of our financial system."
Bad Actors & Secrecy
The letter noted that AML laws haven't been updated in almost 20 years and detailed how each of the groups are impacted by these outdated laws.
"All of the bad actors we work to hold accountable have adopted increasingly sophisticated methods for laundering money—yet every one of them relies on secrecy as a common feature of their schemes," the groups wrote.
The House and Senate are expected to soon convene a conference committee to hash out differences between the two chambers' bills, NAFCU said.