Holy shyt. The house of representatives passed a bill banning anonymous shell companies
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wsj.com
House Passes Bill to Expose Owners of Shell Companies
Will Parker
5-6 minutes
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday requiring shell companies to disclose their true owners, an effort to crack down on money-laundering and other crimes.
Some limited liability companies, sometimes referred to as shell companies, are registered in the U.S. under the names of representatives who neither own nor operate those companies. The House legislation requires that most limited-liability companies and corporations report to the U.S. government the names of anyone with a significant financial stake or control over operations.
Proponents of the bill, known as the Corporate Transparency Act of 2019, said it would unmask people who use shell companies to engage in human trafficking, bribing government officials and other illegal activity.
The White House released a statement commending the bill before Tuesday’s floor vote, but urged the House and Senate to continue working on some of the specifics.
While the bipartisan measure passed comfortably by a 249-173 vote, it is unclear that the bill will pass the Senate, where a similar bill is being discussed. Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho, the chair of Banking committee, has indicated he generally supports more shell-company disclosure.
“This bill says something very simple: No one should be able to establish in the United States a shell company with secret ownership, even secret from law enforcement,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D., N.J.). “We are not Panama, we are not the Cayman Islands.”
In 2016, the U.K. created a database to record beneficial ownership of shell companies. European Union states have agreed to put similar registries in place by 2020.
Some House Republicans and other opponents have said the legislation would expose small-business owners’ personal information to law enforcement and create excessive paperwork for these businesses. The House legislation would require most types of companies to report to the U.S. Treasury Department information on individuals with a 25% or higher ownership in that company. Any other individual who would substantially profit from the company or is primarily responsible for its operations would also have to be disclosed.
“In every state, it requires more information to get a library card than it does to register a company,” said Clark Gascoigne, deputy director of the FACT Coalition, a financial transparency group.
The Treasury Department’s financial crimes division, FinCEN, would use the information to create a database accessible to law enforcement and to financial institutions doing due diligence on customers.
Lawmakers have proposed for years updating the Bank Secrecy Act to require LLCs to disclose the real people who benefit from them.
Previous iterations of the legislation languished in House committees for more than a decade and faced opposition from business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As recently as last year, the USCC testified against proposed disclosure rules, calling them “especially problematic” for small companies.
A representative for the organization didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The bill includes a number of exemptions, such as companies with more than 20 full-time employees in the U.S. that make at least $5 million in annual revenue.
It would also exempt companies that make similar disclosures to other regulatory agencies, such as public traded corporations, as well as certain tax-exempt organizations. The bill would require foreign companies registering to conduct business in the U.S. to disclose their real ownership, too.
“There have been lots of changes to this bill over the years to ease the burden on businesses,” said Mark Hays, who organizes campaigns for the anticorruption advocacy group Global Witness. “This is a huge opportunity to end the single largest loophole in our anti-money-laundering laws.”
Beginning in 2016, FinCEN operated a pilot program to obtain true owner information from shell companies purchasing luxury real estate in New York and Miami. The following year, FinCEN revealed that 30% of the tracked transactions involved people who were also the subjects of suspicious activity reports filed by banks and other financial institutions.
In New York state, lawmakers recently passed a measure that would create a publicly accessible database of shell company buyers of residential properties. The House bill that passed in Washington, however, doesn’t make the disclosures available to the public.
Write to Will Parker at will.parker@wsj.com
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
House Passes Bill to Expose Owners of Shell Companies
Will Parker
5-6 minutes
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday requiring shell companies to disclose their true owners, an effort to crack down on money-laundering and other crimes.
Some limited liability companies, sometimes referred to as shell companies, are registered in the U.S. under the names of representatives who neither own nor operate those companies. The House legislation requires that most limited-liability companies and corporations report to the U.S. government the names of anyone with a significant financial stake or control over operations.
Proponents of the bill, known as the Corporate Transparency Act of 2019, said it would unmask people who use shell companies to engage in human trafficking, bribing government officials and other illegal activity.
The White House released a statement commending the bill before Tuesday’s floor vote, but urged the House and Senate to continue working on some of the specifics.
While the bipartisan measure passed comfortably by a 249-173 vote, it is unclear that the bill will pass the Senate, where a similar bill is being discussed. Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho, the chair of Banking committee, has indicated he generally supports more shell-company disclosure.
“This bill says something very simple: No one should be able to establish in the United States a shell company with secret ownership, even secret from law enforcement,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D., N.J.). “We are not Panama, we are not the Cayman Islands.”
In 2016, the U.K. created a database to record beneficial ownership of shell companies. European Union states have agreed to put similar registries in place by 2020.
Some House Republicans and other opponents have said the legislation would expose small-business owners’ personal information to law enforcement and create excessive paperwork for these businesses. The House legislation would require most types of companies to report to the U.S. Treasury Department information on individuals with a 25% or higher ownership in that company. Any other individual who would substantially profit from the company or is primarily responsible for its operations would also have to be disclosed.
“In every state, it requires more information to get a library card than it does to register a company,” said Clark Gascoigne, deputy director of the FACT Coalition, a financial transparency group.
The Treasury Department’s financial crimes division, FinCEN, would use the information to create a database accessible to law enforcement and to financial institutions doing due diligence on customers.
Lawmakers have proposed for years updating the Bank Secrecy Act to require LLCs to disclose the real people who benefit from them.
Previous iterations of the legislation languished in House committees for more than a decade and faced opposition from business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As recently as last year, the USCC testified against proposed disclosure rules, calling them “especially problematic” for small companies.
A representative for the organization didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The bill includes a number of exemptions, such as companies with more than 20 full-time employees in the U.S. that make at least $5 million in annual revenue.
It would also exempt companies that make similar disclosures to other regulatory agencies, such as public traded corporations, as well as certain tax-exempt organizations. The bill would require foreign companies registering to conduct business in the U.S. to disclose their real ownership, too.
“There have been lots of changes to this bill over the years to ease the burden on businesses,” said Mark Hays, who organizes campaigns for the anticorruption advocacy group Global Witness. “This is a huge opportunity to end the single largest loophole in our anti-money-laundering laws.”
Beginning in 2016, FinCEN operated a pilot program to obtain true owner information from shell companies purchasing luxury real estate in New York and Miami. The following year, FinCEN revealed that 30% of the tracked transactions involved people who were also the subjects of suspicious activity reports filed by banks and other financial institutions.
In New York state, lawmakers recently passed a measure that would create a publicly accessible database of shell company buyers of residential properties. The House bill that passed in Washington, however, doesn’t make the disclosures available to the public.
Write to Will Parker at will.parker@wsj.com
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
They should tackle citizens united next
Dead in the senate unfortunately
#moscowmitch
#moscowmitch
Lets see what the senate has to say about this
brick james
John piffington
These are only targeting the most benign shell companies. If I go overseas and use my US credentials to open a company, and then use that company to buy NY real estate, it's not like the state can't get a warrant and do an investigation and find out who I am and all the people on paper who benefit from the corporation. All this is doing is allowing FinCen to keep a database that they can reference to make investigations easier.
Illegal business is still going to have a proxy-owned company, owning another proxy-owned company, owned by another proxy-owned company, where the true financiers and criminals/terrorists are obviously not going to be anywhere near a sheet of paper. This isn't going to do anything to stop that person that died 11 years ago or a random grandma in Columbia who lives in rural poverty that owns 19 cash business in Columbia, from getting involved in international finance.
I don't see how this would even have a small impact on money laundering considering that every sophisticated organization in the world is already circumventing much more thorough financial reporting in other countries.
Illegal business is still going to have a proxy-owned company, owning another proxy-owned company, owned by another proxy-owned company, where the true financiers and criminals/terrorists are obviously not going to be anywhere near a sheet of paper. This isn't going to do anything to stop that person that died 11 years ago or a random grandma in Columbia who lives in rural poverty that owns 19 cash business in Columbia, from getting involved in international finance.
I don't see how this would even have a small impact on money laundering considering that every sophisticated organization in the world is already circumventing much more thorough financial reporting in other countries.
anything that passes the House is DOA in the Senate if we're honest
This actually has white house support, so kindly take your concern trolling back to the impeachment thread
I've thought before that the world would be a lot better off if corporations simply didn't exist.
If someone wants to start a business or run a company, let them do it. When you start creating corporate structures and make the company its own entity that then can acquire other entities, that's when all the bad shyt starts.
Force people to run their own companies. fukk the rest of the bullshyt. It would change the power dynamic a lot.
If someone wants to start a business or run a company, let them do it. When you start creating corporate structures and make the company its own entity that then can acquire other entities, that's when all the bad shyt starts.
Force people to run their own companies. fukk the rest of the bullshyt. It would change the power dynamic a lot.
Wargames
One Of The Last Real Ones To Do It
On the low/low this just makes it difficult for Americans to own shell companies. Oversea criminal aren’t going to get stuck up on something like this
Wargames
One Of The Last Real Ones To Do It
This actually has white house support, so kindly take your concern trolling back to the impeachment thread
bro you think Trump is going to pass something like this?
shyt do you still believe anything that this WH says
@Arbitrage! Look at this naive breh.
You ain't opening sh!t overseas without DEEP pockets.
Foreign banks treat Americans like lepers.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Kill citizens united and publicly fund elections
law sounds like window dressing
law sounds like window dressing
He has no idea!
Hell, we are about to stop hiring America's period all places. It has nothing to do with this bill in particular even though this bill doesn't help.
The American government has effectively priced Americas workers out of the overseas market for us and many other places.
Lepers is the perfect word!
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