Shell companies are a favorite tool of fentanyl traffickers, money launderers, and tax cheats.
By Emma Loop
Digital Reporter/Editor
CBC
The law was hailed as a historic step in the right direction — the culmination of more than a decade of work between Republicans and Democrats in Washington to crack down on dirty money.
The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) targeted drug cartels and other dangerous criminals who use shadowy shell companies to move their ill-gotten gains. The bipartisan law, enacted in 2021 at the end of Donald Trump’s first term as U.S. president, was seen as a much-needed reform to America’s ability to fight financial crime.
But four years later, and now back in office, Trump has sharply narrowed the law’s reach, all while using fentanyl trafficking as a justification for a potentially devastating trade war against Canada.
“The fact that in the same month where the White House will declare a maximum effort fight against fentanyl that involves tariffs on Canada and Mexico for this purpose, that they will also put out a public statement saying that they’re not going to enforce one of our most important … ways of combatting fentanyl, getting to the money behind it within our own borders, I think it belies explanation,” said Scott Greytak, director of advocacy for anti-corruption group Transparency International U.S., which also has a Canadian chapter.
The Trump administration’s decision comes as the president continues to claim that deadly opioids are pouring in from Canada, despite his government’s own data showing less than one per cent of the fentanyl that U.S. border agents seized in the last fiscal year came from across the northern border.
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