Following up on President Biden’s recent executive order on digital assets, the US Treasury Department recently announced the publication of three reports on digital assets. The reports address issues relating to The Future of Money and Payments; Implications for Consumers, Investors, and Businesses; and an Action Plan to Address Illicit Financing Risks of Digital Assets.
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Today the CFTC, SEC and FinCEN issued a joint statement on digital assets. In particular, the joint statement reminds persons engaged in activities involving digital assets of their anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).
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On September 19, 2019, the House of Representatives by voice vote approved H.R. 2613, a bipartisan bill entitled the “Advancing Innovation to Assist Law Enforcement Act.” The bill instructs the director of FinCEN to study and prepare a report to Congress on emerging technologies, including blockchain, in an effort to combat money laundering and other forms of illicit finance. Though somewhat modest in scope, the bill is among the first to be approved by one of the chambers of Congress on the topic of blockchain.
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On May 9, 2019, FinCEN, the U.S. federal agency charged with combating money laundering, issued two new interpretive documents of interest to the crypto community. The first is interpretive guidance titled “Application of FinCEN’s Regulations to Certain Business Models Involving Convertible Virtual Currencies”. The second document is an “Advisory on Illicit Activity Involving Convertible Virtual Currency”.
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On April 18, 2019, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) announced its first enforcement action against a peer-to-peer virtual currency exchanger, which also included its first civil monetary penalty against a virtual currency exchanger, for failure to file Currency Transaction Reports (“CTRs”).
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In an article written by Hunton Andrews Kurth lawyers in Crowdfund Insider, Richard Garabedian and Shaswat Das discuss the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s enforcement actions and related compliance issues. This blog contains a link to the full article.
Continue Reading AML and Sanctions Compliance Issues Facing Cryptocurrency Companies