On Thursday, December 29, President Biden signed the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023,” a spending package for 2023. With this action, the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Whistleblower Improvement Act has passed, and individuals blowing the whistle on money laundering and sanctions violations now have enhanced protections.
Congress passed the AML Whistleblower Improvement Act on December 23. The Act offers two reforms to the AML Whistleblower Program established in 2021 but undermined by legislative loopholes. The reforms are modeled off provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, which established the highly successful SEC and CFTC whistleblower programs.
One of the Act’s provisions specifies that under the AML Whistleblower Program, qualified whistleblowers will receive awards of “not less than 10 percent” of the sanctions collected in the relevant enforcement action. Previously, there was no statutory minimum for AML whistleblower awards, meaning that awards are purely discretionary.
The Act also establishes a fund to pay AML whistleblower awards. Like the SEC’s whistleblower fund, it is entirely financed by sanctions collected in whistleblower-assisted cases. This means that whistleblower awards are not reliant on the Congressional appropriations process and do not cost taxpayers any money.
The Act also expands the reach of the AML Whistleblower Program to cover whistleblowers who disclose violations of U.S. sanctions such as those imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of...
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