USA – Corruption

Section III: Additional National Action Plan Commitments

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Table 1: Expanding Engagement and Coordination on Responsible Business Conduct Commitments

“Under the Global Initiative to Galvanize the Private Sector as Partners in Combating Corruption (GPS), State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) will develop tools for increasing integrity in due diligence. These tools will support harmonization and streamlining of anti-corruption, human rights, labor, and environmental due diligence processes.” (p.17)

Anti-Corruption (p.37-39)

“Globally, corruption saps economic growth, hinders development, destabilizes governments, undermines democracy, and provides openings for dangerous groups such as criminals, traffickers, and terrorists. The USG coordinates across the globe to prevent graft, strengthen investigation and prosecution of corruption, promote transparency and accountability, and empower civil society and independent media to expose corruption and advance reforms. This makes it harder for criminality and terrorism that affect U.S. security to take root and spread; promotes more democratic, stable governments as partners for the United States; and levels the playing field for U.S. businesses to compete internationally. The following commitments reflect the U.S. whole-of-government approach in addition to those detailed in the U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption.

Table 7: Anti-Corruption Commitments

• Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) will advance a rulemaking effort to increase the transparency of the U.S. real estate sector. On February 7, 2024, FinCEN issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that aims to address the systemic money laundering vulnerabilities associated with the U.S. real estate sector and, consequently, the ability of illicit actors to launder, store, or move criminal proceeds through purchases of real estate. This effort aims to increase the transparency of the U.S. real estate sector, making it more difficult for illicit actors – including corrupt officials, criminal organizations, drug and human traffickers, and others – to launder, move, or store ill-gotten gains through the misuse the U.S. real estate sector.
• Treasury will continue to implement the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) to enhance beneficial ownership transparency for legal persons in the United States. The continued implementation of the FinCEN rule on beneficial ownership information reporting provisions and the revision of FinCEN’s 2016 Customer Due Diligence Rule will aid in the implementation of the CTA and strengthen beneficial ownership transparency for legal persons, such as shell and front companies, in the United States to prevent their misuse by illicit actors. On January 1, 2024, FinCEN launched a beneficial ownership filing system pursuant to the CTA. Under this new framework, many companies operating in the United States are now required to report information to FinCEN about their beneficial owners – in other words, the real people who own or control them. This effort will make it more difficult for illicit actors – including corrupt officials, terrorist financiers, criminal organizations, and drug and human traffickers – to misuse opaque corporate structures like shell companies to launder the proceeds of crime.
• State, in partnership with OECD and under the GPS, will hold a Trusted Dialogue Series on Getting Influence Right. This effort aims to identify core principles of responsible corporate political engagement and produce a set of guidelines, Principles on Responsible Political Engagement for the Private Sector, which will clarify what policies could be implemented to manage and prevent conflict of interest, ensure integrity in lobbying practices and political financing, and uphold the transparent and neutral use of data to inform advice to policymakers.
• State, in partnership with the OECD and CoST – the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative and under the GPS, will support the implementation of a new Infrastructure Anti-Corruption Toolbox (IACT) containing a wide range of tools and activities to prevent and detect corruption in infrastructure. The toolbox focuses on four areas: knowledge creation, capacity building, public-private cooperation, and enhancing accountability. With IACT, State will advance the Blue Dot Network to help infrastructure project stakeholders, including those in government, private sector, and civil society, to better comply with anti-corruption standards. In addition to the work with OECD, State will use the GPS platform to better integrate private sector input on anti-corruption challenges and potential solutions to inform the work of the USG in foreign assistance as well as policy and multilateral priorities.
• Treasury will assess and address the illicit finance risks associated with key financial gatekeepers – such as accountants, lawyers, real estate professionals, investment advisers, and trust and company service providers – and consider potential steps to address these risks. Certain types of financial intermediaries, gatekeepers, and other professions or sectors are not covered by comprehensive and uniform Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations and face varying levels of illicit finance risk exposure. This assessment and subsequent action are meant to address the uneven application of AML/CFT measures to key gatekeeper professions and sectors and work to address those risks. On February 7, 2024, Treasury released its 2024 Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Proliferation Financing Risk Assessments, which discuss these issues. In addition, on February 13, 2024, Treasury issued a sectoral risk assessment of the investment adviser sector.
• Under the GPS initiative, State will support a peer learning community on incentivizing compliance. The community will discuss the challenges faced when governments incentivize anti-corruption compliance programs and identify good practices and other solutions that both governments and companies can use to improve corporate compliance efforts.
• In partnership with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), State will leverage regional anti-corruption hubs in Mexico, Colombia, Kenya, and Thailand to support anti-corruption reforms. Through the hubs, UNODC and State will provide technical assistance for implementing the UN Convention Against Corruption and other reforms that will level the playing field for businesses operating with integrity.
• Under GPS, State will support a new effort, Tech Connect for Integrity. The effort matches data or information technology expert(s) from the private sector with their counterparts in the integrity, anti-corruption, or accountability community (e.g., anti-corruption agencies, supreme audit institutions, or internal audit functions). Together, the peers will identify opportunities to strengthen data-driven approaches for preventing, detecting, and mitigating the risks of fraud and corruption.”