Financial Action Task Force (FATF)

Subscribe to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) via RSS

On June 21, 2019, the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”), a multi-national, inter-governmental body established in 1989 “to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system,” issued its Guidance for a Risk-Based Approach to Virtual Assets and Virtual Asset Service Providers (the “Guidance”), i.e. virtual currency and virtual currency platforms.

Although the standards adopted by FATF and recommended to member countries were telegraphed months prior to issuance of the Guidance, it nevertheless sent shockwaves through the virtual currency market due to FATF’s adoption of standards many call onerous and others call impossible to meet. Notwithstanding this backlash, at a meeting of members of the Group of Twenty (“G20”) held in Osaka, Japan on June 28-29, 2019, the G20 nations declared they “reaffirm [their] commitment to applying the recently amended FATF Standards to virtual assets and related providers for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism.” Thus, member nations will begin the process of crafting regulations intended to carry out the FATF recommendations.
Continue Reading  Financial Action Task Force Drops the Regulatory Hammer on Virtual Currency

Testimony Supports Bill Requiring States to Collect Beneficial Ownership Information at Entity Formation

As we have blogged, the proposed Corporate Transparency Act of 2019 (the “Act”) seeks to ensure that persons who form legal entities in the U.S. disclose the beneficial owners of those entities. Specifically, the Act would amend the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) to compel the Secretary of Treasury to set minimum standards for state incorporation practices. Thus, applicants forming a corporation or LLC would be required to report beneficial ownership information directly to FinCEN, and to continuously update such information.

If passed, the Act would build significantly upon FinCEN’s May 11, 2018 regulation regarding beneficial ownership (“the BO Rule,” about which we blog frequently and have provided practical tips for compliance here and here). Very generally, the BO Rule requires covered financial institutions to identify and verify the identities of the beneficial owners of legal entity customers at account opening. The issue of beneficial ownership is at the heart of current global anti-money laundering efforts to enhance the transparency of financial transactions.

On May 21, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, held a hearing entitled: “Combating Illicit Financing by Anonymous Shell Companies Through the Collection of Beneficial Ownership Information.” This hearing, which provided fuel for passage of the Act, featured the exact same trio of speakers who had appeared before the Committee during a November 2018 hearing on “Combating Money Laundering and Other Forms of Illicit Finance: Regulator and Law Enforcement Perspectives on Reform,” which pertained to a broader set of potential changes to the BSA. The speakers were:

  • Grovetta Gardineer, Senior Deputy Comptroller for Bank Supervision Policy and Community Affairs at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) (written remarks here)
  • Kenneth A. Blanco, Director of FinCEN (written remarks here); and
  • Steven D’Antuono, Acting Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI (written remarks here).

Unlike the broader November 2018 hearing, which featured some distinct tensions between certain positions of the OCC and those of FinCEN and the FBI, this hearing reflected close alignment amongst the speakers. Every speaker stressed the advantages to be reaped by law enforcement, regulators and the public if a national database of beneficial owners was required and created. Only the OCC acknowledged the need to consider the issue and sometimes competing concern of the regulatory burden imposed on financial institutions by the current BSA/AML regime, and even the OCC seemed to assume that a national database on beneficial ownership would represent only a boon to financial institutions, as opposed to yet more data – however helpful – to be absorbed and acted upon to the satisfaction of regulators. None of the speakers addressed some of the potential ambiguities and problems inherent in the current language of the Act, such as the fact that the Act lacks precision and fails to define the critical terms “exercises substantial control” or “substantial interest,” both of which drive the determination of who represents a beneficial owner.
Continue Reading  Senate Committee Hears from OCC, FinCEN and FBI on Risks Posed by Anonymous Corporate Structures

As we have blogged (here and here), the United States – despite its self-perception as a global financial cop and “good guy” – is often regarded by the world as a haven for money laundering and tax evasion. The U.S. just took another black eye in the arena of global perception: the European Commission (“EC”) has placed the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa on a list of 23 high-risk jurisdictions which it says are “posing significant threats” to the European Union’s financial system as a result of deficiencies in their Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) and Countering the Financing of Terror (“CFT”) systems. Specifically, the EC perceives these jurisdictions as being attractive to money laundering and tax crimes. The listed United States’ territories and Commonwealths are not alone; they dubiously share space on the EC’s blacklist with Saudia Arabia and Panama.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. reaction was swift and angry: the U.S. Department of Treasury released a statement declaring that the list was flawed; the list was created without any meaningful input from the United States; and that the list contradicted the more careful analysis conducted by the Financial Action Task Force. Further, the Treasury Department stated that U.S. financial institutions should ignore this blacklisting, and did not need to apply any greater scrutiny to implicated transactions.
Continue Reading  Europe Increasingly Views United States as Faltering in Fight Against Money Laundering

On December 7 and 10, 2018, the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) released two reports evaluating the United Kingdom’s (“UK”) and Israel’s anti-money laundering (“AML”) and counter-terror financing (“CTF”) programs and welcomed Israel as the 38th member of the task force. The FATF is an inter-governmental policymaking body dedicated to creating AML standards and promoting effective measures to combat money laundering (“ML”) and terrorist financing (“TF”). When releasing both reports, the FATF described the UK and Israel as key leaders and innovators in the fight against ML/TF and provided several recommendations on how both programs can be strengthened.

Because both reports total over 250 pages, this blog post focuses on only the key findings in each report.  The FATF Evaluation of the United Kingdom (the “UK Report”) concluded that, although the UK has effective and robust AML policies addressing both current and future threats, it needs to improve its AML oversight by increasing the resources dedicated to its financial intelligence unit. Meanwhile, the Joint FATF/MONEYVAL Evaluation of Israel (the “Israel Report”) praised the country’s effective use of financial intelligence but found that Israel needs to strengthen its preventative measures to address future ML/TF risks.

Continue Reading  FATF Evaluates the UK’s and Israel’s AML/CTF Programs and Welcomes Israel as its 38th Member

Are Proposed AML Regulations for Real Estate Closings and Settlements Soon to Follow?

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FINCEN”) announced on November 15 that it has renewed and revised its Geographic Targeting Orders (“GTOs”) that require U.S. title insurance companies to identify the natural persons behind legal entities used in purchases of residential real estate…

Denmark Suffers Greatest Increase in Annual Risk Rating

The Basel Institute on Governance (“Basel Institute”) recently announced that the associated Basel Centre for Asset Recovery has released its seventh annual Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index (“AML Index”) for 2018, described by the Basel Institute as “an independent, research-based ranking that assesses countries’ risk exposure to money laundering and terrorist financing.”  The risk scores for each country in the AML Index “are based on 14 publicly available indicators of anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) frameworks, corruption risk, financial transparency and standards, and public transparency and accountability.” The Basel Institute, which is associated with the University of Basel, describes itself as “an independent not-for-profit competence centre working around the world with the public and private sectors to counter corruption and other financial crimes and to improve the quality of governance.”

The public AML Index, which pertains to 129 countries, is here; an “expert edition” containing a full list of scores and sub-indicators for all 203 countries — available for cost to private persons or industry, or for free to academic, public, supervisory and non-profit organizations — is here.  A summary of the public AML Index is here.

As we will discuss, the AML Index bemoans a lack of progress in the global fight against corruption, and in particular cites lack of enforcement of existing laws and declining press freedom across the globe. The AML Index also underscores how countries with seeming low risk in fact have lurking problems.
Continue Reading  2018 Basel AML Index Measures Risk and Cites Lack of Effective Enforcement and Declining Global Press Freedom

According to the Financial Flow from Human Trafficking report recently published by the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) and the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, human trafficking is estimated to generate $150.2 billion per year. Human trafficking remains one of the fastest growing and most profitable forms of international crime affecting nearly every country in the world. The FATF report examines the financial flow associated with human trafficking for the purpose of forced labor, sexual exploitation, and the removal of organs, and the common and unique ways that the proceeds from these types of exploitation are laundered.

The FATF report identifies issues related to designing better efforts to detect money laundering related to human trafficking. First, the more exposure the offender and/or the victim have to the formal financial sector or government, the greater the opportunities for identifying signs of money laundering. Second, no single indicator alone is likely to confirm money laundering from human trafficking. Third, wider contextual information can prove useful in identifying signs of trafficking. Fourth, human trafficking may be easiest to identify at the victim level or at the lowest level of a criminal organization; at higher levels of criminal organizations, the indicators may be more opaque and suggest a variety of crimes.
Continue Reading  Recent FATF Report Provides New Guidance for Identifying Money Laundering Related to Human Trafficking

The Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) recently released a special report on professional money launderers (“PMLs”) who provide money laundering expertise and services to their crime-committing clients. The Report describes the functions and characteristics of a PML and the services they provide. Although the FATF has issued many reports on potential vulnerabilities in anti-money laundering efforts, this Report focuses on the affirmative threats posed by money laundering regimes.

The Report is primarily descriptive, and contains examples of enforcement actions involving PMLs across the globe. A non-public version of the Report, available to Members of the FATF and the FATF Global Network, sets forth practical recommendations for the detection, investigation, prosecution, and prevention of PML-related laundering, including “appropriate regulation,” law enforcement coordination, and international co-operation and information exchange. Presumably, the Report will provide additional fuel to efforts across the world to close perceived regulatory gaps involving the collection of beneficial ownership information, and the potential role of professionals, including lawyers, in assisting others to launder illicit funds.
Continue Reading  FATF Report: Professional Money Laundering and Related Threats

Critics Bemoan Removal of Potential Weapon Against Shell Companies

Last week, and on the eve of a scheduled markup of the original bill in the House Financial Services Committee, a new draft of the Counter Terrorism and Illicit Finance Act (“CTIFA”) was sent to Congress.  That bill, among other things, removes a key passage of…

On June 12, 2018, FinCEN issued an “Advisory on Human Rights Abuses Enabled by Corrupt Senior Foreign Political Figures and their Financial Facilitators” to highlight the connection between corrupt senior foreign political figures and their enabling of human rights abuses.  The Advisory provides examples of potential red flags to aid financial institutions in identifying the means by which corrupt political figures and their facilitators may move and hide proceeds from their corrupt activities – activities which, directly or indirectly, contribute to human rights abuses and other illegal activity.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) issued Recommendation 12 in June 2013 to address the risks posed by politically exposed persons (PEPs), and that Recommendation has been implemented through FinCEN rules and guidance.  Thus, U.S. banks already are expected to have in place risk-based policies, procedures and processes regarding PEPs, including conducting enhanced due diligence.  Nonetheless, FinCEN issued this Advisory to “further assist” U.S. financial institutions’ efforts to detect and report foreign PEP facilitators’ use of the U.S. financial system to “obscure and launder the illicit proceeds of high-level political corruption.”
Continue Reading  FinCEN Issues Advisory on Human Rights Abuses Enabled by Corrupt PEPs and Their Financial Facilitators