[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 158 (Thursday, September 29, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5614-S5615]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SA 6090. Mr. CASSIDY (for himself, Mr. Wyden, and Mr. Whitehouse)
submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to amendment SA 5499
submitted by Mr. Reed (for himself and
[[Page S5615]]
Mr. Inhofe) and intended to be proposed to the bill H.R. 7900, to
authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2023 for military activities
of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for
defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military
personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes; which
was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
At the end of subtitle F of title XII, add the following:
SEC. 1276. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON THREAT POSED BY ACTIVITIES OF
TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS.
(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Trade-based money laundering is among the most widely
used and least understood forms of money laundering,
disguising proceeds of crime by moving value through
international trade transactions in an attempt to legitimize
illicit origins of money or products.
(2) The transnational nature and complexity of trade-based
money laundering make detection and investigation exceedingly
difficult.
(3) Drug trafficking organizations, terrorist
organizations, and other transnational criminal organizations
have succeeded at trade-based money laundering despite the
best efforts of United States law enforcement.
(4) Trade-based money laundering includes other offenses
such as tax evasion, disruption of markets, profit loss for
businesses, and corruption of government officials, and
constitutes a persistent threat to the economy and security
of the United States.
(5) Trade-based money laundering can result in the
decreased collection of customs duties as a result of the
undervaluation of imports and fraudulent cargo manifests.
(6) Trade-based money laundering can decrease tax revenue
collected as a result of the sale of underpriced goods in the
marketplace.
(7) Trade-based money laundering is one mechanism by which
counterfeiters infiltrate supply chains, threatening the
quality and safety of consumer, industrial, and military
products.
(8) Drug trafficking organizations collaborate with Chinese
criminal networks to launder profits from drug trafficking
through Chinese messaging applications.
(9) On March 16, 2021, the Commander of the United States
Southern Command, Admiral Faller, testified to the Committee
on Armed Services of the Senate that transnational criminal
organizations ``market in drugs and people and guns and
illegal mining, and one of the prime sources that underwrites
their efforts is Chinese money-laundering''.
(10) The deaths and violence associated with drug
traffickers, the financing of terrorist organizations and
other violent non-state actors, and the adulteration of
supply chains with counterfeit goods showcase the danger
trade-based money laundering poses to the United States.
(11) Trade-based money laundering undermines national
security and the rule of law in countries where it takes
place.
(12) Illicit profits for transnational criminal
organizations and other criminal organizations can lead to
instability globally.
(13) The United States is facing a drug use and overdose
epidemic, as well as an increase in consumption of synthetic
drugs, such as methamphetamine and fentanyl, which is often
enabled by Chinese money laundering organizations operating
in coordination with drug-trafficking organizations and
transnational criminal organizations in the Western
Hemisphere that use trade-based money laundering to disguise
the proceeds of drug trafficking.
(14) The presence of drug traffickers in the United States
and their intrinsic connection to international threat
networks, as well as the use of licit trade to further their
motives, is a national security concern.
(15) Drug-trafficking organizations frequently use the
trade-based money laundering scheme known as the ``Black
Market Peso Exchange'' to move their ill-gotten gains out of
the United States and into Central and South America.
(16) United States ports and U.S. Customs and Border
Protection do not have the capacity to properly examine the
60,000,000 shipping containers that pass through United
States ports annually, with only 2 to 5 percent of that cargo
actively inspected.
(17) Trade-based money laundering can only be combated
effectively if the intelligence community, law enforcement
agencies, the Department of State, the Department of Defense,
the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Homeland
Security, the Department of Justice, and the private sector
work together.
(18) Drug-trafficking organizations, terrorist
organizations, and other transnational criminal organizations
disguise the proceeds of their illegal activities behind
sophisticated mechanisms that operate seamlessly between
licit and illicit trade and financial transactions, making it
almost impossible to address without international
cooperation.
(19) Whereas the United States has established Trade
Transparency Units with 18 partner countries, including with
major drug-producing and transit countries, to facilitate the
increased exchange of import-export data to combat trade-
based money laundering.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the activities of transnational criminal organizations
and their networks, and the means by which such organizations
and networks move and launder their ill-gotten gains, such as
through the use of illicit economies, illicit trade, and
trade-based money laundering, pose a threat to the national
interests and national security of the United States and
allies and partners of the United States around the world;
(2) in addition to considering the countering of illicit
economies, illicit trade, and trade-based money laundering as
a national priority and committing to detect, address, and
prevent such activities, the President should--
(A) continue to assess, in the periodic national risk
assessments on money laundering, terrorist financing, and
proliferation financing conducted by the Department of the
Treasury, the ongoing risks of trade-based money laundering;
(B) finalize the assessment described in the Explanatory
Statement accompanying the Financial Services and General
Government Appropriations Act, 2020 (division C of the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (Public Law 116-93)),
which directs the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the
Department of the Treasury to thoroughly assess the risk that
trade-based money laundering and other forms of illicit
finance pose to national security;
(C) work expeditiously to develop, finalize, and execute a
strategy, as described in section 6506 of the Anti-Money
Laundering Act of 2020 (title LXV of division F of Public Law
116-283; 134 Stat. 4631), drawing on the multiple instruments
of United States national power available, to counter--
(i) the activities of transnational criminal organizations,
including illicit trade and trade-based money laundering; and
(ii) the illicit economies such organizations operate in;
(D) coordinate with international partners to implement
that strategy, exhorting those partners to strengthen their
approaches to combating transnational criminal organizations;
and
(E) review that strategy on a biennial basis and improve it
as needed in order to most effectively address illicit
economies, illicit trade, and trade-based money laundering by
exploring the use of emerging technologies and other new
avenues for interrupting and putting an end to those
activities; and
(3) the Trade Transparency Unit program of the Department
of Homeland Security should take steps to strengthen its
work, including in countries that the Department of State has
identified as major money laundering jurisdictions under
section 489 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C.
2291h).
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