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New York Senator Says He Will Fight to "Toughen Up" Clinton Money-Laundering Bill

Andrew Mair, Tax-news.com

13 March 2000

With the Bank of New York still knee-deep in dirty Russian laundry, New York Senator Charles E. Schumer issued a warning to the Clinton administration that he will fight to "toughen up" anti-money laundering legislation recently proposed by the US Treasury. At a hearing of the House Banking Committee last week Schumer painted the bill as a toothless tiger, singling out the discretionary nature of its penalties for criticism, and suggesting instead that offshore banks suspected of being involved in money-laundering should automatically be forbidden from accessing the U.S. banking system.

The hard-line attitude of a growing number of Democrats led by Schumer could be bad news for the offshore banking centres in the Caribbean, who are already under attack by the OECD and for whom the U.S. is a major market.

Of course such attacks are partly smoke screens to cover up the fact that regulators within industrial nations have difficulty in controlling money-laundering inside their own financial systems without inflicting serious damage on their domestic banks. No-one is going to forbid the Bank of New York access to the US banking system! It's easy to attack small, defenceless banks on Caribbean islands and it looks good.

Still, there are 600 banks on Cayman, and their assets top $500bn. If all this money came from the criminal privatisation of Russian defence factories, the Soviet Union must have been a lot richer than anyone thought. The uncomfortable fact for the Congress is that much of this money is American, and legitimate - it just doesn't pay taxes. What are they going to do about it?

RELATED ARTICLES:

Offshore Banking Bill Attacked - New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/031000launder-policy.html

Feds Step Up Laundering Crackdown - Associated Press
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000309/pl/money_laundering_13.html

Money-laundering bill called flawed. Diplomacy would prevail over tough action, senator says - USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000310/2017105s.htm

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