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An independent U.S. agency wants lawmakers to extend anti-money laundering obligations to investment advisers, lawyers and accountants to counter attempts by the Russian Federation and other authoritarian-led countries to undermine Western democracies.

The 20-page discussion draft seen by ACAMS moneylaundering.com would also establish a federally administered system of specific AML standards for money transmitters, which are currently supervised at the state level, and empower the Treasury Department to bar foreign-based money services businesses suspected of laundering funds from the U.S. financial system.

The Rejecting Enemy Payments through Enforcement and Leadership Act, or REPEL Act, aims to bring U.S. efforts against the destabilizing activities of authoritarian leaders in Russia, China and elsewhere in line with those targeting global terrorism, staff for the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or Helsinki Commission, wrote in a draft letter pitching the bill.

“Oligarchs and other proxies of authoritarian[s] covertly deploy ill-gotten wealth to sustain their kleptocratic systems … export and weaponize corruption, conduct political influence operations abroad and fund cross-border networks of social organizations, media outlets, academic initiatives … perceive[d] as being subversive, extremist, divisive, or otherwise harmful to the United States and its partners and allies,” the bill’s authors wrote in the letter.

Under the Patriot Act, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network already has authority to order domestic lenders to close any correspondent account they maintain for a foreign banks that U.S. officials identify as a primary money-laundering concern.

The proposals would expand section 311 of the 2001 law to permit FinCEN to similarly penalize nonbank financial firms such as MSBs, insurance firms and online payment processors, and free the bureau from its current obligation of having to seek public comment on any such undertaking.

Within three years of the bill’s enactment, FinCEN would also have to establish a database of financial institutions’ reports on cross-border payments as previously mandated by a 2004 law, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, but which never came to fruition.

The discussion draft revives proposals that have been in the works for years, such as the cross-border payments database and the extension of AML rules to investment advisers, but also introduces “interesting,” and perhaps overly ambitious, new proposals, said Dan Stipano, former deputy chief counsel for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

“Since FinCEN is already required by law to establish the database, and hasn’t done so, it is not clear why passing another law that basically says the same thing will make them any more responsive,” Stipano, now with the Buckley law firm in Washington, D.C., wrote in an email to moneylaundering.com.

The bureau’s own proposal to bring investment advisers under its purview stalled nearly five years ago, and any effort to require law firms and accountancies to establish AML programs can expect “significant pushback” from those industries, Stipano added.

If passed, the preliminary bill would also task the Treasury Department with identifying the “most significant” threats that authoritarian regimes pose to the U.S. and its financial system, including their efforts to fund disinformation campaigns through corrupt energy deals, shell companies and cryptocurrencies.

The department would review current measures against those threats and pitch new ones if the bill is ultimately adopted.

Countering authoritarian influence, or CAI, would rise to the level of anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing as a priority under the bill, while U.S. officials would be tasked with lobbying the Financial Action Task Force to issue guidance specific to the issue, according to the discussion draft now circulating at the Helsinki Commission.

Congress created the agency in 1976 by appointing 18 federal lawmakers and one official each from the State, Defense and Commerce departments to ensure U.S. compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords, whose 35 signatories—primarily European nations—pledged to respect each other’s sovereignty and cooperate on economic, environmental and other global issues.

Members of the commission hold public hearings, engage in all manners of outreach within the U.S. government and with foreign counterparts, and, in their role as lawmakers, may introduce and advance legislation, according to the commission’s website.

Positions reserved for the executive branch departments are currently vacant.

Contact Valentina Pasquali at vpasquali@acams.org