Ofac Licensure for Investigators Act
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BEATTY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Waters for yielding.
I rise in support of my bipartisan bill, H.R. 1450, the OFAC, Licensure for Investigators Act, which I am very proud to co-lead with my colleague, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nunn).
This bill, Mr. Speaker, requires the Secretary of the Treasury to develop a special licensing pilot program within the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and it will be administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
This pilot project would grant private-sector firms a temporary specific license to conduct nominal financial transactions with sanctioned entities to assist with law enforcement investigations. These private firms would be, for example, as you have heard, Mr. Speaker, blockchain analytics firms or the financial intelligence units within corresponding banks.
The commonsense legislation seeks to enhance the tools at our disposal to investigate sanctioned individuals and entities and to hold bad actors accountable, and that is very important.
This concept is similar to, as you have heard by our ranking member, Mr. Speaker, a keep-open letter, which is when the government asks a bank to keep a suspicious illicit account open. As it stands now, private financial firms are currently limited to their capacity to engage with sanctioned entities due to a robust sanction regime.
That also means that it is impossible to access data about bad actors' networks and methods, intelligence that would be of great assistance to law enforcement agents, to government, to consumers of their products, and the financial industry overall, Mr. Speaker.
So by giving OFAC the authority to tailor the parameters of the specific licensure pilot program, this legislation enhances our investigatory toolbox while guaranteeing essential protections.
For example, the specific license would be well-defined and narrowly applied, ensuring that private firms only conduct nominal transactions, for example, $5, $10, so they can collect better data and intelligence.
Lastly, the program would have strict oversight, requiring that licensure recipients provide detailed monthly reports to OFAC on their activities and findings under the license.
This innovative bill harnesses the vast resources of the private sector and allows the Federal Government to work collaboratively with financial firms to further our national security goals.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join our chairman, our ranking member, and my colleague, Mr. Nunn, in supporting this bill.
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