U.S. Introduces Anti-Money Laundering Bill

On August 3, 2001, Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Co-Chairman of the U.S. Senate Drug Caucus, introduced bipartisan legislation. Additional cosponsors are Senators Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Bill Nelson (D-FL), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and Mike DeWine (R-OH). The key elements of the bill, which is called the Money Laundering Abatement Act, target international problems. It particular, it would: (1) add foreign corruption offenses, such as bribery and theft of government funds, to the list of predicate offenses that give rise to money laundering; (2) prohibit U.S. banks from providing banking services to foreign shell banks that have no physical presence in any country and carry high money laundering risks; (3) require U.S. banks to undertake enhance due diligence reviews to prevent money laundering when opening (a) a private bank account with $1 million or more for a foreign person, and (b) a correspondent account for an offshore bank or foreign bank in a country posing high money laundering risks, and (d) subject a depositor’s funds in a foreign bank’s U.S. correspondent account subject to the same civil forfeiture rules that apply to depositors’ funds in other U.S. bank accounts…[more]