published May 5th 2016, 8:00 pm, by Alan Katz, Jesse Drucker, Angela Greiling Keane and David Kocieniewski

(Bloomberg) —
The Obama administration renewed its push Thursday to make it harder for people to hide money in the U.S., jumping on momentum created by the release of leaked Panama legal documents to pressure Congress on proposals that have been languishing for years.

The government will send proposed legislation to lawmakers that would require companies to name the owners of any new entities they create and would expand the Justice Department’s power to subpoena information in some corruption cases.

It also finalized a rule that will require financial institutions to identify the account holders hidden behind shell companies, while proposing new rules to eliminate a loophole that allows some foreign-owned companies to hide assets in the U.S.

“Nobody should be able to hide in the shadows from their legal obligations, and nobody should be able to play by a different set of rules,” said Wally Adeyemo, deputy national security adviser for international economics. “The Panama Papers disclosure underscored the importance of our domestic efforts and underscored the fact that more needs to be done.”

The leak of more than 11 million documents from a Panama law firm last month put the spotlight on offshore companies used to shield owners’ identities and sparked an international push for transparency. While U.S. officials said Thursday’s proposals weren’t in response to the Panama documents, the leak highlighted the need for more to be done to combat money laundering and tax evasion.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced a proposed rule that would require certain foreign-owned companies to get employer identification numbers from the Internal Revenue Service, something that hadn’t been required. The rule would allow the IRS to determine if the companies owed U.S. taxes and to share information with other jurisdictions. Officials also repeated the administration’s call for Congress to pass legislation that would require financial institutions to report U.S. accounts held by foreign persons to overseas regulators, bringing the U.S. in line with other countries.

Collecting Names

In its final language for the rule requiring banks to collect the names behind corporate accounts, the administration made tweaks to extend its implementation period and allow more exemptions. The so-called customer due-diligence rule left at 25 percent the level of ownership that triggers disclosure.

For years, Congress and the Treasury have floated measures that would require greater disclosure of the beneficial owners of companies registered in the U.S. Those efforts escalated after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as homeland security officials warned that onshore shell companies could be used to finance terrorist groups. But opposition by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Bar Association — and lobbying by the National Association of Secretaries of State — thwarted most of those calls for more disclosure, according to Heather Lowe, director of Global Financial Integrity, a group that advocates for greater business transparency.

“The primary opposition was from the secretaries of state, who didn’t want to lose business,” she said. “And politicians don’t want to alienate the secretaries of state because they are the ones who run the elections.”

Some other countries have also been pushing for greater transparency. The European Union last year passed a directive requiring member states to set up registries to collect companies’ real owners — an effort to crack down on money laundering and terrorist financing. But the EU effectively left it up to each country to decide if its registry should be fully public.

If Congress passed legislation creating a central registry to list the beneficial owners of shell companies, the impact could be felt across multiple industries. Swaths of high-end real estate in the U.S., as well as some art, are purchased through companies that shield the identities of the true owners.

The Treasury also pushed Congress for action on tax-information sharing. Nearly 100 jurisdictions around the world have agreed since 2014 to impose new disclosure standards for bank accounts and other investments requiring that information is shared with regulators in their home countries regardless of where the account is held. But the most prominent holdout is the U.S., which along with Panama has not signed onto the standard.

Account Disclosure

A 2010 U.S. law, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, requires financial firms to disclose foreign accounts held by U.S. citizens and report them to the IRS. But the law doesn’t require disclosure of U.S. bank accounts held by foreigners to regulators overseas. As a result, financial planners are advising customers seeking confidentiality to move accounts out of traditional secrecy jurisdictions like Switzerland and Bermuda and into the U.S., as reported by Bloomberg in January.

“Currently, the United States does not provide its Fatca partners with the same information about U.S. financial institutions that foreign financial institutions must provide the IRS,” Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. “Reciprocity with other jurisdictions is a key component of any successful strategy for combating international tax evasion.”

The Justice Department proposed a series of legislative changes that it said would help boost efforts to pursue kleptocrats and speed up the ability to gain evidence located in other countries.

One proposal would let the agency seek evidence in money laundering investigations through the use of civil administrative subpoenas, as opposed to a criminal grand jury. Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said those subpoenas would be used in civil cases, such as those involving funds stolen by leaders of corrupt countries.

The Justice Department also wants to increase the time foreign governments have to initiate a forfeiture case when seeking assets located in the U.S. — from 30 days to 90 days.

–With assistance from Tom Schoenberg, Keri Geiger and Greg Farrell. To contact the reporters on this story: Alan Katz in Washington at akatz5@bloomberg.net ;Jesse Drucker in New York at jdrucker4@bloomberg.net ;Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net ;David Kocieniewski in New York at dkocieniewsk@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net John Voskuhl, Justin Blum

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