FATF Remains Suspicious of United States’ Trusts

Duncan E. Osborne (Osborne, Helman, Knedbel & Deleery, LLP) recently published an article entitled Guardians at the Gate: Update on the Gatekeeper Initiative as part of the ABA’s Section of Real Property, Trust and Estate Law 19th Annual Symposia.

Here is a summary of the article:

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is made up of several nations and countries, including the United States, was created to combat money laundering issues threatening the banking system and financial institutions and to fight against terrorist financing.  The FATF works as a peer pressure system, evaluating countries and recommending policies that should be implemented to decrease these problems. 

Trusts is one of the areas considers to be very high risk by the FATF, along with various aspects of business entities and securities.  The US Treasury is working with other organizations on various proposals.  While trusts are not mentioned as one of the entities to be affected by these changes, they remain a primary concern of the FAFT and there will likely be pressure from the FATF to require some sort of state or federal law mandating transparency of trusts.