LOS ANGELES — The Free Speech Coalition has submitted a statement for the record to Congress, detailing the ways in which Treasury regulations aimed at preventing financial crime may be unintentionally leading to de-banking adult businesses and workers.
The statement follows a congressional hearing on oversight of FinCEN, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, held by the House Financial Services Committee on February 14. During the hearing, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) called on FinCEN officials to explain what steps they were taking to minimize the de-banking of legal businesses and workers.
Beatty’s question, an FSC rep noted, is not the first time this issue has been raised in Congress. In November, during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) asked officials from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency what steps that office was taking to ensure that financial institutions were not “unintentionally or intentionally closing the accounts of customers who were engaged truly in lawful activities.”
FSC Executive Director Alison Boden said, “Over the past year, we’ve been meeting with legislators, regulators and Treasury officials to raise awareness of the consequences of the systematic debanking our industry faces. We’re glad to see these questions finally being asked, and look forward to working with both Congress and Treasury to fix the problem.”
FSC’s statement to Congress catalogs the scope of de-banking faced by adult businesses and workers — more than 60% of whom have lost or been denied financial services as a result of their relationship to the industry. The statement cites FinCEN regulatory guidance that FSC believes is unintentionally resulting in banks flagging adult businesses and accounts. The FSC submission will become part of the Congressional Record, a step that FSC hopes will help establish the organization as a resource and begin a formal dialogue with Congress on the issue.
Read FSC’s statement for the record here. For more information, visit FreeSpeechCoalition.com.