Five years after the FinCEN Files investigation revealed how U.S. banks helped move illicit money worldwide, U.S. authorities are rolling back key reforms enacted in its aftermath, sparking alarm among transparency advocates, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reports.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) — central to the 2020 ICIJ-BuzzFeed News exposé — said it plans to delete ownership information submitted by U.S. companies to the new federal company ownership registry. Under a rule expected later this year, only foreign businesses with foreign owners would be required to provide ownership data.
Advocates say the move undermines the Corporate Transparency Act, the 2021 bipartisan law passed months after the FinCEN Files that created the registry to expose anonymous shell companies. In March, Treasury already exempted U.S. firms from reporting obligations. The planned deletion would go further, critics say.
“This is doubling down on Treasury’s unlawful gutting of this statute,” said Ian Gary, head of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition. Gary Kalman of Transparency International U.S. warned: “Without beneficial ownership information, investigations are useless.”
The FinCEN Files, published in 2020 by ICIJ and BuzzFeed News, analyzed more than 2,100 suspicious activity reports leaked from FinCEN, showing how banks enabled flows of dirty money tied to drug cartels, corrupt regimes, arms traffickers and other criminals. The disclosures shook global markets, with bank stocks tumbling and governments announcing probes.
BuzzFeed’s Jason Leopold, who obtained the documents from former Treasury official Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards — later jailed for leaking the reports — recalled the impact: “It felt like an explosion… you felt the veil of secrecy being lifted.” The data was ultimately shared with ICIJ after BuzzFeed approached the consortium in 2019.
Read more at ICIJ