A: It's no secret, as the year comes to a close, that the Anti-Money-Laundering Act of 2020 is huge. Altogether, this is the biggest thing in AML legislation and rule-making since the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act 2001 (the USA PATRIOT Act). . If not, will they have to get permission from clients each time they consult the registry?

Separately, law enforcers will have to have a legitimate reason as to why they are accessing the database, but it appears that this will be a fairly perfunctory requirement that will not hamper their access to the registry.

Financial institutions have basically embraced the creation of the corporate registry because it relieves them of the primary responsibility they have had to collect ownership information under the FinCEN CDD Rule, but there is some concern about whether the requirement to consult account holders to view their ownership filing might be the equivalent of “tipping off” customers, i.e. letting customers know that they are being scrutinised.

It is important to note that President Trump has threatened to veto the National Defence Authorisation Act – an Act that Congress must pass every year to fund the military. He has till 21st December to sign the NDAA, actively veto it or exercise a 'pocket veto' by not returning it to Congress, but the House and the Senate have already passed the NDAA with veto-proof majorities.

Q: Is FinCEN growing in stature as a result of this process?

A: Under current law, FinCEN is the primary BSA regulator, but it is clearly getting new responsibilities and resources. In 2018 FinCEN made an earlier provision about banks making enquiries about the beneficial ownership of their legal-entity clients – the CDD Rule to which I referred earlier. It’s the regulation that gave banks the primary responsibility for collecting beneficial ownership information, which becomes FinCEN’s responsibility now.

Under the Act, FinCEN will create new standards by which examiners will judge banks. These include judging banks on the suspicious activity reports they write and how good a job they do overall in providing intelligence to law enforcement. The examining agencies will actually ask law enforcement to evaluate the regulated financial institutions they receive intelligence from. That’s novel and big.

Q: What are your observations about US AML enforcement actions in 2020?

A: The biggest enforcement action in the US was undoubtedly against Goldman Sachs – that involved a $3 billion penalty. It was related to the 1MDB case. Apart from that, it was a quiet year for enforcement at the federal level although there were some actions against individuals. FinCEN, notably, fined former US bank compliance officer Michael LaFontaine $450,000 in March. The big regulator this year (and last year) with regard to monetary penalties was not a federal regulator; it was the New York Department of Financial Services, which brought enforcement actions against Deutsche Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea.

Q: What changes do you think the Biden administration will make?

A: I think you'll see some differences in the sanctions regime. There is likely to be a push on ABC . Biden would also probably like to ease sanctions against Cuba, as Obama did when he was in power.

Q: Do you think that 2021 will see more US regulatory activity in the digital arena?

A: Yes. Regulators will pay more attention to crypto-currency. This was the year in which the Department of Justice brought a lot of cases and ordered some big seizures. Federal prosecutors, for example, seized 300 crypto-currency wallets. We'll see more actions against rogue crypto-exchanges next year, both in the US and in Europe too. FinCEN has pushed for a lowering of the bar on the Travel Rule. It wants to tighten up global transactions in general.

* Kieran Beer can be reached at kbeer@acams.org