Ron Paul Dear Colleague Congress Should Repeal the Bank Secrecy Act
Ron Paul Dear Colleague Congress Should Repeal the Bank Secrecy Act
January 27, 1999
(J. Bradley Jansen was Ron Paul’s legislative staffer for these issues at the time)
“Congress should repeal the Bank Secrecy Act…Our freedoms and our privacy are much too important to be compromised merely to make money-laundering more costly and inconvenient for criminals.”
Richard Rahn, president of Novecon Corp. & adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute
Investor’s Business Daily, August 12, 1997
January 27, 1999
Dear Colleague,
The costs to our freedoms and privacy outweigh any alleged benefits from the Bank Secrecy Act and the latest transgression of our liberty, the proposed Know Your Customer rule. Even worse, such laws hurt, not help, law enforcement–even as they trample our rights.
U.S. customs agents stopped Mr. Hosep Krikor Bajakajian and his wife as they attempted to board a flight abroad and sought to confiscate the entire, legally-obtained, $357,144 they were carrying. His only “crime” was not filing the proper report to the officials–for which the maximum fine is only $10,000. (The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled in the Bajakajians’ favor.)
“Forfeiture actions are a little known body of law in which the government confiscates people’s property by claiming that the property, not its owner, is guilty of a crime,” explains Tom Gordon of FEAR (Forfeiture Endangers American Rights). The potential for abuse under the Know Your Customer rule is staggering where the source of funds for ALL transactions is required.
Instead of going after real criminals, agents are distracted harassing innocent people such as Mr. Bajakajian. Author James Bovard demonstrated how money laundering laws work to the detriment of law enforcement in an Investor’s Business Daily article: Aldrich Ames, CIA employee-turned-traitor, regularly received wire transfers of $50,000 or more as payoff for treason. His crimes went undetected…
“Why? Although the spy’s banks notified regulators of his suspicious activity, the warnings were apparently overlooked because the feds were distracted by the mountains of minutiae created by the mass of routine Currency Transaction Reports. The lesson here is that such laws not only are hazardous to political and economic freedom, but also often impede rather than enhance efforts to protect Americans from the real bad guys.”
Jerry Heaster, columnist, Kansas City Star, December 12, 1998
Please help the Ad Hoc Coalition for Financial Privacy bring some sanity back to law enforcement. Cosponsor the Know Your Customer Sunset Act, the Bank Secrecy Sunset Act, the FinCEN Public Accountability Act, and the Freedom and Privacy Restoration Act (HR 220). Please email or call Bradley Jansen at 5-2831.
Respectfully,
Ron Paul