Cooperate with Law Enforcement Agencies and Watch Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairwoman Waters for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking the chairwoman for bringing up this bipartisan bill today and for maintaining bipartisan momentum in the areas where bipartisan agreement is achievable. Chairwoman Waters and her staff were instrumental in passing this bill in the last Congress and including it in JOBS 3.0.

I would also like to thank my friend, Congressman Hill, for working on the Cooperate with Law Enforcement Agencies and Watch Act, the CLAW Act, with me.

I am proud to support this bill, which passed with very strong bipartisan support in the last Congress, a 55-0 vote in the Financial Services Committee, a 379-4 vote on the House floor.

This bill creates a commonsense safe harbor from Bank Secrecy Act liability for a bank that keeps an account open at the request of law enforcement. For background, law enforcement agencies sometimes send what are called keep open letters to financial institutions so that they can obtain critical evidence in investigations by following the money.

While following these law enforcement requests is optional, agreeing to them does, in fact, create a technical violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. This complicates the decision for a financial institution that should be simple. This could, in fact, undermine our efforts to prevent illicit finance or money laundering.

This bill will enhance the ability of the law enforcement community to track funds in a criminal investigation, leading to better evidence and, hopefully, conviction of criminals higher up in the hierarchy. To be clear, nothing in this bill takes away from financial regulators' safety and soundness powers, and financial institutions still have to file SARs when they have a keep open letter.

In addition, this bill requires that the keep open letters have a definite duration but does not preclude law enforcement from sending subsequent letters to extend the period, should the investigation continue.

This bill is a great example of how Democrats and Republicans can come together on a number of issues of common interest.

In a world in which criminals and criminal organizations have access to increasingly sophisticated tools and technologies to carry out their criminal activities, we should help financial institutions in leveling the playing field to bring these criminals to justice.

This bill follows other commonsense, bipartisan efforts that I have supported to modernize our Nation's ability to confront dangerous criminals and criminal organizations. I recently introduced with Congressman Kustoff the CONFRONT Act, which would require the Treasury Department to develop a national strategy to combat the financial crimes of transnational criminal organizations and individuals. I am hopeful that this bill can also be passed in the near future with similarly strong bipartisan support.

This bill today is an important measure that allows financial institutions to effectively assist with combating crimes such as money laundering and illicit financing, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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