After holding an anti-money laundering bill for a month in the hopes of winning over the committee’s top ranking Republican, the House Financial Services Committee advanced it without him on Wednesday, in a move that could ultimately undermine the odds of passing it through the Senate.
The legislation would require corporations and limited liability companies to report who actually owns them to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, in the hopes of curbing the use of anonymous shell companies for hiding illicit assets from criminal investigators and tax officials.
The bill’s sponsor, New York Democrat Carolyn B. Maloney, pulled the bill from the committee’s May markup session after ranking Republican Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina expressed reservations over requiring small businesses to report information to FinCEN without quantitative data from the agency demonstrating how that information would help law enforcement.
View the complete June 13 article by Jim Saksa on The Roll Call website here.