A Win for Dark Money
Trump just raised the cost of doing honest business.
The Trump administration has recently ended ownership-reporting requirements for U.S. businesses, shedding light on the administration's focus on dark money. This seemingly technical change is a massive boon to financial criminals, allowing them to store and launder illicit funds in U.S. financial institutions with less risk of detection. However, the change comes at the expense of banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, which now bear the burden of verifying customer data themselves.
Despite the Treasury's claim that the measure is a deregulatory victory for common sense and small businesses, the relief for honest businesses is negligible. Financial institutions still need to report the relevant names, addresses, dates of birth, and government ID numbers every time they transact with a financial institution, adding a slight burden to their operations. But this relief is only temporary, as the financial sector is now shouldering the burden of this change.
The real winners in this situation are shady business owners who may have previously faced challenges in opening accounts due to anti-money-laundering rules. In 2021, Capital One closed more than 300 of the Trump Organization's accounts on suspicion of violating anti-money-laundering rules. By destroying the ownership-reporting database, the Trump administration has removed an essential avenue for tracking criminals and left financial institutions with a costly compliance burden.
Written by urgent.news from The Atlantic's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
