US amends anti-money laundering law for beneficial ownership after Panama Papers, including to detect purchases of expensive real estate with illicit money

Tweet Panama Papers Driven Changes The US Treasury has announced several amendments, and proposed legislative amendments, to its anti-money laundering (“AML“) legislation in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal to tackle the disclosure of what is called “beneficial ownership.” Beneficial ownership means the beneficial, as opposed to the legal, owner of shares of a […]

Primer on Beneficial Ownership, Numbered, Shelf and Shell Companies

Tweet Beneficial ownership, shell companies, shelf companies and numbered companies – What’s the Difference? Since the Panama Papers, there seems to be an increasing interest in the concepts of beneficial ownership, numbered companies, shell companies and shelf companies and people often use some of these terms interchangeably but they are not the same things. 1. […]

France calls for stronger counter-terrorist financing laws

Tweet Consensus on Supranational Risk Assessment  As part of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive approval process in the European Union (the “4th AMLD“), the Council of the European Union’s President yesterday issued declarations and proposals for the regulation of anonymous financial transactions that are transacted on new fintech products. The communication from the President included […]

Aligning FATCA with the AML compliance regime

Tweet It has been noted by US officials that the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA“), 26 USC Ch. 4, is not only one of the most significant pieces of US legislation for financial institutions, asset managers and foreign residents, it is also one of the most legally complex and technical that “will spawn significant enforcement activity […]

How Canadian and US immigrants from China & Hong Kong move billions of dollars overseas

Tweet Bloomberg News has a follow-up article here on last week’s story of how wealthy immigrants from China and Hong Kong use alleged money-laundering services offered by the Bank of China Ltd. to transfer funds to Canada and the US. Last week, China Central Television broadcast a story alleging that the Bank of China offered a money […]

Moneyval calls for greater corporate transparency

Tweet The Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering group, the Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (“Moneyval“) issued its annual report this week and called on governments to end corporate beneficial ownership. The Report noted that organized crime uses corporate structures set up on jurisdictions in which […]