Combating Money Laundering in the United States: The Recent Development

Abstract

Rapid globalisation has created a borderless economy in the world. Thus, the need for comprehensive legislation becomes paramount to curtail the efforts of money launderers and other entities financing terrorism in and outside national borders. Although the United States of America have been enacting legislation to tackle illicit flows of proceeds of crime and have created a substantial legal framework, the laws are not enough to completely curtail money laundering. Recently, sophisticated techniques adopted by money launderers necessitated amendments to the anti-money laundering laws. Accordingly, the United States has enacted Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) 2020, which amends Bank Secrecy Act 1976 to address the illicit advancements made by money launderers robustly. The Objective of the study is to highlight the recent development in the United States' effort in
combating money laundering. The paper does this by first tracing the incremental development of the United States anti-money laundering laws. It then discusses the reforms AMLA 2020 made to the anti-money laundering laws. The paper adopts a doctrinal
approach using the pure qualitative research method. The paper finds that AMLA 2020 significantly reformed anti-money laundering laws in the United States. However, more needs to be done to combat money laundering effectively. Therefore, the paper recommends that the United States enact unexplained wealth order law to complement the law enforcement efforts in deploying asset forfeiture laws to forfeit to the government laundered proceeds of crime from criminals.