Why Is the American Bar Association In Favor of Money Laundering? They Should Support S.1454 and H.R. 3089.
Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI), Carolyn Maloney’s (D-NY-12) new bills will clean up international fraud and money laundering through US banks and real estate. They might do more for national security and democracy than just about any other bills before Congress. Voters like me will be watching to see who signs on.
You’d think cheers would be going up across the land from our nation’s legal system at the idea of this powerful new set of tools to go after crime. But one group of people who clearly oppose the law are the American Bar Association. You’d think that lawyers would be in favor of laws that support the rule of law, but in this case, you would be wrong.
Today’s twin op-eds in WaPo couldn’t lay out the case for anti-money laundering laws more clearly. They don’t need to convince Americans of the dire need for such laws, we only have to look at Paul Manafort’s increasingly desperate smile to know such laws would end up doing everyone a big favor. Where would Manafort be now if he had never gotten involved with laundering money? He must wonder that every single day.
Given the clear need, why might the American Bar Association oppose these laws? Writing on behalf of “more than 400,000” ABA members, the ABA cites to the burden the laws would place on small businesses. It strange to see the ABA arguing for less burdensome regulations given that burdensome regulations are what produce the majority of law jobs in this country. Wasn’t the ABA supposed to be concerned with declining law jobs?
In perhaps the strangest sentence ever written by the ABA, it argues (at the bottom of page one of its letter to the bill’s cosponsors) that a violation of the proposed law might result in someone going to jail for a “paperwork violation.” Strangely, the ABA seems not to realize that a “paperwork violation” is essentially what Mr. Manafort is charged with. Some of us call that “white collar crime.”
Hilariously, at the top of page 2, the letter also alleges that keeping a database of compliant companies would subject them to cyberattacks by hostile foreign powers. In fact, we are all hoping that such bills might prevent the flow of laundered cash that funds such cyberattacks in the first place. Ha ha.
The overall thrust of the letter is to argue that our existing anti-money laundering laws are working just fine. Given the fact that Paul Manafort has apparently been laundering money for the Russians for years, but we are only now finding out about it, this is a strange assertion to make. This letter raises disturbing questions about the ABA that I hope they will answer before they write another letter to Congress on behalf of their members.
