Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), member of the Senate Finance Committee, joined Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to send a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Acting Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Himamauli Das, calling on the Treasury Department (Treasury) to swiftly implement the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and provide a timeline for doing so.
Implementation of the CTA would upgrade the country’s anti-money laundering laws and help the federal government fully impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs. But FinCEN has proposed only one of three planned CTA rules, and is now four months past the statutory deadline for implementation.
“The Treasury Department has yet to finalize the implementation of the CTA—or even set a timetable for its completion… In various hearings last month, both of you could only commit to proposing the second CTA rule by the end of ‘this year.’ These delays run contrary to the clear instructions of Congress, undermine American efforts to respond to Russia’s war against Ukraine, and hinder broader efforts to protect the U.S. financial system against the threat of illicit finance,” wrote the lawmakers.
Passed by Congress last year, the CTA is landmark legislation that would upgrade the country’s anti-money laundering laws and address one of the biggest weaknesses in the United States’ anti-money laundering safeguards: anonymous shell companies that hide the true, beneficial owners of assets. Beneficial ownership disclosure, as required by the CTA, is particularly relevant amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since such information is necessary to implement the United States’ historic sanctions against Russian oligarchs and to protect national security and the stability of the U.S. financial system.
The lawmakers also acknowledged that FinCEN is working with limited resources and stated that Congress is working to remedy this problem through the appropriations process.
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