FSC Details Banking Harms to Congressional Oversight Committee
Free Speech Coalition has submitted an official Statement for the Record to Congress, detailing the ways in which Treasury regulations aimed at preventing financial crime may be unintentionally leading to debanking adult businesses and workers.
The Statement follows a congressional oversight hearing of FinCEN, the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, held by the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) 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 debanking of legal businesses and workers.
Beatty’s question isn’t 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 at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency what steps it was taking to ensure that financial institutions were not “unintentionally or intentionally closing the accounts of customers who were engaged truly in lawful activities.”
“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,” says Alison Boden, Executive Director of Free Speech Coalition. “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 for the Record catalogs the scope of debanking 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 lists out FinCEN regulatory guidance that it believes are unintentionally resulting in banks flagging adult businesses and accounts. FSC’s submission will become part of the official Congressional Record, establishing FSC as a resource and reference, and beginning a formal dialogue with Congress on the issue.
Read FSC’s Statement for the Record here.
