ICIJ Reports Treasury Department is Failing to Track Dirty Money

While protecting democracy is about ensuring free and fair elections, civil rights, and all that other goods stuff, it is also about holding the governments we elect accountable. That sometimes involves getting into the bureaucratic nitty gritty and making sure laws are implemented after being passed. This story by the International Consortium of International Journalists does exactly that, highlighting how the Treasury Department is stumbling to implement the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act  — legislation requiring all United States-based companies to identify their owners.

Before the law, there were thousands of black-box companies that neither the government nor banks knew anything about. These anonymous organizations were and still are used by money launderers and tax avoiders — your “drug cartels, oligarchs, despots and the global elite” — to sustain an innumerable amount of illegal activity, some of which most certainly impinge on democracy and its advocates. But even though CTA is now on the books, if the Treasury Department does not get the details right, such as making it easy for law enforcement and banks to cancel and investigate shady transactions, then that is all the Act will ever be — another stack of government paper.

Identifying the owners of shell companies is not the silver bullet that will kill financial crime writ large, but it is definitely an important first step for the United States. It is also the bare minimum, given that most other developed countries already require this level of transparency from their businesses.

Read the full ICIJ article here: https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/u-s-treasury-faces-a-wave-of-criticism-over-faltering-push-to-unmask-anonymous-companies-and-track-dirty-money/