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Editor’s Note: The ACAMS moneylaundering.com legal team reviews sanctions- and anti-money laundering related developments in the first 120 days of the Trump administration.

Sanctions

On Jan. 20, hours after his second term commenced, President Donald Trump revoked 79 Biden-era executive orders, several of which guided federal implementation and enforcement of asset freezes and other financial restrictions against U.S. adversaries and transnational criminals.

Executive Order 14148 reimposed the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism while also repealing E.O. 14022 of April 1, 2021, that terminated certain sanctions against the International Criminal Court while also ending a national emergency that formed the basis of sanctions targeting illegal settlements in the West Bank of Palestine.

The White House at the same time disclosed plans to designate certain transnational syndicates as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists to account for the threat of “violence and terror” those groups pose.

Pursuant to those plans, the State Department and Treasury Department blacklisted the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico, Tren de Aragua in Venezuela and five other organizations as FTOs and SDGTs.

An E.O. dated Feb. 4 called for the renewal of “maximum pressure” on Iran and formed the basis of designations of several new targets, including a “teapot” refinery in China and maritime vessels handling Iranian oil.

On March 21, the Treasury Department took the opposite tack in dropping sanctions against Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixing service that the Biden administration blacklisted in August 2022 for handling cryptocurrency pilfered by the Lazarus Group, a North Korean state-sponsored hacking collective.

Treasury then moved to bolster federal efforts against cartels on April 15 by blacklisting four alleged members of La Nueva Familia Michoacana in Mexico, and an alleged fuel-theft and fentanyl-trafficking ring linked to Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion on May 1.

AML

Other executive orders hold import for anti-money laundering compliance, whether directly or indirectly.

On Feb. 18, for example, the Trump administration moved to limit the independence of federal regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency without mentioning those agencies by name.

Eight days later, Trump announced his intention to allow foreign nationals to acquire what he termed “gold cards,” and thereby a path to American citizenship, for $5 million, raising concerns that the new program would expose the U.S. to corruption and other types of illicit finance.

On March 11, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ordered money services businesses in 30 ZIP codes in California and Texas to flag remittances of more than $200 to Mexico and verify the identities of parties involved in such transactions.

FinCEN then issued an interim rule to exempt U.S. parties from the beneficial ownership-disclosure requirements of the Corporate Transparency Act that the bureau itself pitched back in December 2021 after various businesses and interest groups argued that the obligations not only breached constitutional principles, but also threatened to harm them commercially.

Trump pardoned BitMEX on March 27, less than three months after a federal judge in New York fined the Seychelles-based global cryptocurrency exchange $100 million for willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Trump also pardoned BitMEX executives Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, Gregory Dwyer and Samuel Reed.

On May 1, FinCEN proposed blacklisting Huione Group, a company in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that operates a network of businesses and financial services platforms, as a conduit for illicit funds under the Patriot Act after determining that the company handled proceeds from cyberheists perpetrated by the Lazarus Group.

Eleven days later, the Justice Department disclosed plans to prioritize cases against drug traffickers, professional money launderers, sanctions and tariff evaders, and parties involved in any one of six other “high impact” crimes.

Contact Larissa Bernardes at lbernardes@acams.org