By Dan Byrne for AMLi
THE US CONGRESS is set to pass new laws allowing anyone providing a financial crime tipoff to claim up to 30% of subsequent penalties.
The Congress will vote this week on the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) for the 2021 fiscal year.
Provisions included in the act provide for bigger incentives for tipsters if they can offer any information about violations of the American Bank Secrecy Act – legislation which covers US defences against financial crime.
If a tipster’s information leads to successful enforcement actions, and if the monetary sanctions involved exceed $1 million, the tipster can receive close to one third of the penalty money, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
The final amount available to claim would be decided on a case-by-case basis. Factors will include the significance of information and the helpfulness of the tipster themselves in the investigation.
The measures would be an expansion of current laws rather than a complete overhaul. Existing rules allow the Treasury to pay the lesser of $150,000 or 25% of a monetary penalty.
However, commentators and experts have previously voiced their criticism of these current rulings, saying they are not enough to incentivise tips on the scale the US Treasury is looking for.
The NDAA also contains provisions for the long-awaited beneficial ownership scheme, however the act as a whole may not come into force as soon as legislators hope.
President Trump has repeatedly criticised the bill and, as recently as Tuesday, threatened to veto it because it does not include his long-desired ‘repeal of section 230’ – a rule which provides immunity for web-based publishers in relation to third-party content.
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