ABA joined a broad coalition of advocacy groups from different industries in a letter urging House and Senate Armed Services Committee leaders to include the Corporate Transparency Act in the final National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021. The bill—which would direct the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to establish and maintain a registry of beneficial ownership information and also modernize Treasury authorities and certain anti-money laundering requirements—was included in the House-passed version of the NDAA.
“The United States has not updated its anti-money laundering laws in approximately twenty years,” the groups wrote. “These outdated rules, according to the Financial Action Task Force, result in significant gaps in our anti-money laundering laws. The real-life consequences, as detailed above, are alarming. It is long past time to bring our laws into the modern era.” They added that the Corporate Transparency Act “offers a bipartisan pathway to modernizing the nation’s anti-money laundering laws and closing the loopholes that allow the dangerous manipulation of our financial system.”
