EXPERTS SAY LEGISLATION TO EFFECTIVELY COMBAT TRADE-BASED MONEY LAUNDERING HAS NO CHANCE OF PASSING IN 2024, DUE TO PARTISAN POLITICS OF DO-NOTHING U.S. CONGRESS AHEAD OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

The "Combating Cross-Border Financial Crime Act of 2023," a bipartisan effort to rein in Trade-Based Money Laundering by creating the Cross-Border Financial Crime Center, appears to have zero change of passage by Congress in 2024, due to purely political reasons. The Republican-controlled Congress, which is fixated upon blocking any effective legislation that might politically support the re-election of the present administration, is committed to even interfering with proposed laws that support TBML suppression. No wonder public confidence in Congress has reached a new low.

Experts in Washington estimate that the bill, which is languishing in Committee, has only between a two and five percent chance of success during the current session of Congress, even though the failure rate at detecting and interdicting TBML is believed to be an abysmal 99%. The bill, which would greatly strengthen DHS' ability to fight Trade-Based Money Laundering, by focusing strictly upon cross-border crime, is intended to be a game-changer, to suppress a type of money laundering that the private sector has been heretofore totally unable to control.

It is a sad indictment of Washington politics that elected officials are more concerned about who can take back the White House, rather than a transnational crime that the Senate has pronounced a threat to National Security of the United States. The bill is Senate 3384.