Author: Lawrence A. Goldman

New anti-money laundering legislation was included as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) enacted by Congress on January 1, 2021 through the override of a presidential veto. The NDAA is a series of federal laws primarily specifying the annual budget and expenditures of the United States Department of Defense. The NDAA for Fiscal Year 2021 includes the expansive Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (AMLA) with the purpose of updating and amending the country’s anti-money laundering laws. It has long been acknowledged that the United States lags behind other developed countries in its safeguards designed to prevent the flow of illicit money—so much so that the Tax Justice Network, an independent institution that indexes countries’ financial secrecy, currently ranks the United States as the second most financially secretive jurisdiction, ranking behind only the Cayman Islands and just ahead of Switzerland1. Together with the AMLA, Congress also enacted the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which directs the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to establish and maintain a national registry of beneficial owners of entities that are deemed “reporting companies.”2 In so acting, Congress stated that bad actors seek to conceal their ownership of business entities through the use of shell companies in order to facilitate illicit activities including money laundering, the financing of terrorism,...