Ofac Licensure for Investigators Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1450, the OFAC Licensure for Investigators Act, sponsored by Representative Beatty.

This bill would require the Secretary of the Treasury to develop a pilot program at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, by which private-sector firms like blockchain analytics firms or the financial intelligence units within correspondent banks could receive a license to send or receive nominal financial transactions to and through sanctioned entities. These small amounts could yield big details that could further our understanding of what is happening and by whom in sanctions evasion and money laundering investigations.

We need what this bill proposes because as the global anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regime has become increasingly effective in detecting and deterring the abuse of the financial system, bad actors have often moved their transactions into illicit markets and spaces or used technologies and methods that are harder to track.

Investigative efforts by firms and in-house functions dedicated to tracking down these attempts to avoid detection help banks and governments, among others, to identify bad actors, accounts, and typologies used by criminals and terrorists. They are limited, however, in how far they can see into these dirty operations.

One of those limitations in the visibility into the financial transactions of bad actors is due to sanctions, which appropriately and forcefully prevents parties from engaging with targets of sanctions. Investigators, whether in private firms or large bank intelligence units, must stop a transaction after finding evidence that suggests that a wallet, account, or address may be associated with a sanctioned person. With the specific licenses envisioned by this bill, OFAC would closely manage narrow and explicit exceptions to its sanctions programs to allow investigators to engage with sanctioned persons in order to gain more visibility into the opaque networks and practices.

Again, OFAC would be limited to allowing only nominal amounts for such traceable transfers. The bill also ensures that there is robust oversight of this process, requiring the recipients of these specific licenses to report to OFAC monthly on their findings. This is similar in concept to the keep-open letters that government officials provide to financial institutions to keep open suspicious accounts so the government can watch the transactions and follow the money.

That is because H.R. 1450 would help investigators better follow the money to make their sanctions and money laundering investigations more fruitful for the United States Government, banks, and others that employ such services.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, this bill, H.R. 1450, the OFAC Licensure for Investigators Act from Representative Beatty would develop a program at the Department of the Treasury that would allow financial crime investigators, including those at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, that is OFAC, to better trace and understand the efforts by bad actors to evade sanctions and launder funds. By allowing nominal amounts to be directed through certain accounts with stringent U.S. Government oversight, banks, government agencies, and others seeking knowledge about how these bad actors behave and are connected will benefit. This bill will help to keep our financial system and national security secure.

I, again, urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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