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Article

5 Apr 2018

Author:
Amol Mehra, The Washington Post

USA: A lawyer calls for the American Bar Association to support an anti-corruption bill concerning corporate transparency

"My law degree wasn't meant for money laundering. But boy, it would make it easy.", 29 March 2018

I didn't pursue a law degree to learn how to launder money for human traffickers, opioid kingpins or corrupt public officials. But my legal training has helped me to understand just how easy it would be.
Anonymous companies are ubiquitous in most money-laundering schemes...Shell companies are formed with no record of the true owners, and because they are so easy to set up...you can easily layer dozens of them to confuse investigators and hide dirty money...That makes it nearly impossible for investigators to untangle these webs...
There is large and growing bipartisan support for a bill to collect ownership information on anonymous companies...Yet bizarrely, and regrettably, the American Bar Association opposes these reforms...The ABA promotes a set of voluntary guidelines it developed in 2010, even though it's painfully clear that those guidelines aren't working....If we want to reflect the better angels of our nature, we need to speak up, be accountable for our actions and do the right thing. I hope that the American Bar Association will agree and immediately drop its opposition to anti-corruption bills calling for corporate transparency.