The lack of transparency in our campaign finance system combined with extensive foreign money laundering creates a significant vulnerability for our democracy. We don’t know how much illicit money enters the United States from abroad or how much dark money enters American political campaigns, but in 2015, the Treasury Department estimated that $300 billion is laundered through the U.S. every year. If even a small fraction of that ends up in our political campaigns, it constitutes an unacceptable national security risk.
While foreign funding of campaigns is prohibited by federal statute, the body that enforces campaign finance laws – the Federal Election Commission (FEC) – lacks both teeth and resources. Sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China know how to bypass the ban on foreign funding by exploiting loopholes in the system and using layers of proxies to mask their activities, making it difficult for the FEC, the FBI, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to follow the money. [...]
The fact that we don’t know exactly how much foreign dark money is being channeled into U.S. politics is precisely why we need to reduce our vulnerabilities. There is ample evidence of dark money penetrating other democracies, and no reason to believe we are immune from this risk. In 2004, for example, Lithuania’s president was impeached after the media disclosed that a Russian oligarch who contributed to his campaign later received Lithuanian citizenship. Just this past January, in Montenegro, a local politician was charged with laundering Russian funds to support a pro-Russian political party. In Australia, an intelligence report leaked in 2017 exposed pervasive Chinese financial influence in the country’s domestic politics. Similar allegations recently surfaced in New Zealand.
No comments:
Post a Comment