Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo provided the Senate Banking Committee with an update on banking, housing and urban affairs.
Adeyemo has been a strong advocate for increasing the regulatory powers of the United States Treasury and their impact on national financial affairs.
Adeyemo provides update to Senate Banking Committee
The deputy secretary said before the Senate Banking Committee: “I am here today because we need additional tools to protect the American people.”
Adeyemo goes on to say that “we (Treasury) take measures to exclude terrorist groups and other malign actors from the traditional financial system, we are concerned about how these actors are using cryptocurrencies to try to circumvent our sanctions.”
In November 2023, Deputy Secretary Adeyemo had proposed three key reform issues to the Senate Banking Committee. These included the creation of a targeted financial sanctions tool “against foreign providers of digital assets who facilitate illicit finance”.
The second proposed topic was to “modernize and fill gaps in existing authorities by expanding their scope to explicitly cover key players and core activities of the digital asset ecosystem.”
Third, Adeyemo addressed the “jurisdictional risk arising from offshore cryptocurrency platforms, which represents a fundamental challenge.”
The US Treasury said cryptocurrency is an emerging player in the hands of dangerous groups. Deputy Secretary Adeyemo would also like to highlight funding avenues used by terrorists and major interest groups.
He said: “As we continue to assess that terrorists prefer to use traditional financial products and services, we fear that without congressional action to provide us with the necessary tools, the use of virtual assets by these actors will only increase.
While these actors use virtual assets for only a fraction of their illicit activities today, we know that in other industries illicit actors rely almost completely on virtual currencies. In recent years, ransomware attacks have only increased in scope, sophistication and frequency. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network found, based on BSA reports, that more than $1 billion in ransomware payments were made solely using cryptocurrency in 2023. This not only impacts our national security but also the our economy,”
You can watch the full Senate Banking Committee hearing and hopefully today’s session will eradicate the domestic and foreign threats that illicit banking can pose.
Image: ideogram.
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