The US Senate’s Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Committee has committed funds of US$2 million for a Trade Based Money Laundering (TBML) risk assessment. 

The cash would fund the treasury department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to carry out a risk assessment to analyse the threat TBML poses to US national security.

Focused assessment

The assessment will focus on how cartels and terrorist organisations’ hijack international trade networks to transfer funds across international borders.

It will also focus on how TBML schemes allow these organisations to circumvent banks and the monitoring to which banks are subject. 

Political momentum

US senator Bill Cassidy, who has been calling for some time for the Government Accountability Office to review and evaluate the federal government’s efforts to end and prevent TBML (Trade Based Financial Crime, 23 July 2018), has welcomed the funding.

Cassidy, a Republican who sits on the US Senate Finance Committee, sees TBML as one of the main methods by which drug traffickers, criminal organisations and terrorist financiers use legitimate trades to disguise illegally obtained proceeds.

National security threat

“In order to solve this crisis, we need to fully analyse the threat it poses to our nation. This begins the process”, he says.

“Cartels and terrorists are moving billions of dollars unchecked to fund their violent organisations. Trade-based money laundering is America’s biggest national security threat that almost no one is paying attention to,” the senator said recently.

Categories: Trade Based Financial crimes News