Financial Transparency Coalition

Earlier this week, Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced a bill to “combat U.S. corporations with hidden owners” that would require disclosure of beneficial ownership information in the company formation process. This proposed legislation would facilitate the transparency of the financial system by making it more difficult for criminal organizations to hide behind front companies and shell corporations.

Nearly 5 years ago the international community, led by the United States, imposed the first in a line of increasingly harsh economic sanctions on Iran in the hopes of ending the country’s nuclear ambitions. Despite some signs of success, consensus on the effectiveness of the sanctions remains elusive. However, what is becoming clear is that sanctions are contributing to an explosion of corruption and funneling billions of dollars to Iran’s fastest growing group of kleptocrats: the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, is like an amalgam of the Iranian CIA, Marines, Mafia and Fortune 500....

Global Financial Integrity Managing Director Tom Cardamone has written a new blog post for the TrustLaw website highlighting U.S. Senator Rand Paul's (R-KY) efforts to gut the USA PATRIOT Act of key anti-money laundering/anti-terror financing provisions. The key provisions are set to expire Friday morning unless the U.S. Congress renews them before then. Referencing two of Senator Paul's eight proposed amendments to the act, Cardamone writes:

Two of the Paul amendments deal with Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) that money services businesses...

JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesia has succeeded in dismantling a major new Al-Qaeda-style terrorist network but corruption and complacency threaten to unravel its gains against home grown extremists, a think tank said Tuesday.