WASHINGTON – Arizona senior Senator Kyrsten Sinema spoke at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, calling for improvements to anti-money laundering efforts to stop the financing of dangerous drug cartels.
“We must cut off financing for dangerous drug cartels that threaten our communities, while protecting Arizona small businesses from unintended consequences,” said Sinema.
Sinema also discussed how Arizona bears the brunt of the border crisis. Sinema underscored how the Sinaloa Cartel and other criminal groups move millions of dollars of methamphetamine and heroin from Mexico through Arizona. They are tearing Arizona communities apart and disrupting their finances is critical in order to stop their operations.
Earlier this year, Sinema helped introduce the FinCEN Improvement Act, legislation she also championed in the U.S. House that improves the federal government’s counter threat finance capabilities to keep Arizonans safe. In 2015, Sinema introduced a bill that requires government to develop a coordinated, national strategy to combat the financing of terrorism. Her bipartisan bill was signed into law in 2017. As required by Sinema’s law, the Treasury Department released in August the first-of-its-kind illicit finance report, bringing needed emphasis to this critical national security issue. Last Congress, Sinema also introduced a pair of bipartisan bills to disrupt the financing of transnational criminal syndicates like Sinaloa and stop the financing of weapons of mass destruction by rogue states like North Korea and Iran. Both bills passed the U.S. House with large, bipartisan majorities.