Enhancing Treasury's Anti-Terror Tools Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in support of H.R. 5607, entitled, Enhancing Treasury's Anti-Terror Tools Act.

Again, I would like to thank my colleague and the vice chair of our task force, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Pittenger), for his great work on this and for introducing this bill. I am proud to serve as the lead Democratic cosponsor on this most important legislation.

This bill will enhance tools available to the Department of the Treasury in its efforts to combat the financing of terror, money laundering, and related illicit finance.

This legislation is one of a package of bills that reflects the culmination of 11 hearings in the Financial Services Committee's Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing, which explored a wide range of vulnerabilities in the global financial system.

Over the course of the task force hearings, Members learned that there are relatively few full-time Treasury attaches at our embassies. At one point I know that members of the task force met with our Treasury attaches in the Middle East, and they are so thin on representation there that several of them have multi-country responsibilities requiring them to hop around and deal with several high-risk locations and countries. So we obviously need to get them some more help. They do a tremendous job. Don't get me wrong. I am extremely pleased and proud of the work that Treasury does, but I think they could use some more resources, and this bill aims at that vulnerability.

Over the course of the task force hearings, Members learned that there are relatively few full-time Treasury attaches at our embassies around the globe to lend their expertise and to help them eliminate terrorism and money laundering vulnerabilities in the global financial system. The bill before us today takes welcome steps to help us better understand how to improve coordination between the Department of the Treasury, foreign financial ministries, and foreign central banks in an effort to block the financing of terror, money laundering, and related illicit finance.

The legislation also addresses gaps that the Treasury Department has identified in its efforts to compel reporting of information on transactions that present elevated anti-money laundering risks, which may not be captured by broad-based anti-money laundering program requirements.

Additionally, the legislation takes steps to address longstanding humanitarian concerns resulting from the private sector's increased unwillingness to serve higher-risk areas like Somalia. With few global banks willing to keep remittance channels open, diaspora communities here in the U.S. have been left with few safe and legitimate channels to get critical funds to their families back home.

The bill seeks to address this growing concern by directing the Treasury Department to review and report on the viability of creating a pilot program aimed at helping banks and credit unions become more comfortable offering account services to countries that facilitate remittances to high-risk locations.

Finally, the bill would promote the importance of America's international engagement by encouraging the Secretary of the Treasury to work with finance ministries around the world to spur the integration of intelligence authorities with ani-money laundering and counterterrorism finance efforts.

I am extremely pleased with this legislation, and I would like to commend all of my colleagues on the task force for their efforts to help counter the financing available to terrorist groups. Our work on the task force has been a truly bipartisan effort, it has been a pleasure, and I look forward to the opportunities to build on this good work in the future.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I don't have any further speakers.

I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source