Ofac Licensure for Investigators Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BEATTY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of my bill, H.R. 6370, the OFAC Licensure for Investigators Act, which is cosponsored by Mr. Nunn of Iowa. I also thank the chairman and my friend for his support.

The global regime to counter money laundering and terrorist financing is becoming increasingly effective at detecting and deterring the abuse of our financial markets. However, we must stay ahead of the bad actors, who in many cases are moving into darker corners of the financial system and using technologies and methods that are harder to trace.

Private investigative firms, some with unique technologies and analytic methods, should be enlisted to help banks and governments, among others, identify the criminals and the terrorists, their bank accounts, and their typologies.

Today, these private firms are limited in how far they can see into a bad actor's operations. One of those limitations is due to sanctions, which appropriately prevent parties from engaging with sanctioned targets. However, as a result, whether in analytic firms or large bank intelligence units, the good guys have to stop their investigations upon finding evidence that suggest that a wallet or account or address may be associated with a sanctioned individual or entity.

There is a workaround today, but it is far too limited. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, provides licenses to individual parties and transactions which allow for narrow exceptions to its sanctions program. My bill requires OFAC to design a pilot licensing program that would allow investigators to apply to OFAC for permission to get a step further and engage with sanctioned persons under certain conditions to gain more visibility into opaque networks and practices.

The investigators could only use nominal amounts but would be able to trace where the money goes. Ensuring that there is robust oversight in this process, the bill mandates that recipients of these specific licenses must report to OFAC monthly on their findings.

This program would be similar to when government officials ask financial institutions to keep open suspicious accounts so the government could then go and watch the transactions, and while they are doing that, they are able to follow the money.

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Mrs. BEATTY. Will the gentleman yield?

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Mrs. BEATTY. Madam Speaker, I say to the gentleman that I would. I think that is a very fair question to ask. Let me just assure you that it is also my intent, as the sponsor of this bill, that the term ``nominal'' in this context should not be interpreted to be more than the $10 as you referenced, and I certainly understand why that concern came up. As you know, this bill is intended to enhance our efforts to stop terrorist financing. The kind of investigation that this bill is trying to allow for doesn't need more than a few dollars--or nominal, not to exceed $10--to be effective. We have seen this before, so I am very comfortable assuring you that we would define it as $10 or less.

I thank the gentleman for clarifying this. I, too, want to put on the record that it would be defined as the $10 mark, and I certainly thank the gentleman for his support on this legislation.

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Mrs. BEATTY. Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield myself the balance of my time for the purpose of closing.

My colleague, Mr. Nunn, and I have devised a smart pilot program that would allow for private-sector investigators to engage in small-dollar transactions with sanctioned persons in order to gain valuable information about how networks and activities of those bad actors work.

I am pleased to say that we have agreed on the nominal amount of $10, and by creating a licensing program for such a person, both business and government will benefit from the information gained, improving visibility into criminal and terrorist financing networks. That is what this bill is all about.

Madam Speaker, for those reasons, I again urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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