Congress’s watchdog wants Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do more to track the performance of a unit that works to uncover trade-based money laundering.
ICE says it already collects certain data, and it can’t tell partner countries how to enforce the law.
The audit by the Government Accountability Office says trade-based money laundering runs on increasingly complex schemes that are hard to detect and are national security threats.
Both the buyer and seller typically know that what’s actually shipped and paid for isn’t what shows up on the invoice. Organized crime of all sorts, terrorists and corrupt government officials do it to move illicit funds across borders.
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations has a unit that partners with certain countries to share trade data, crunch it and look for red flags.
The audit says the ICE unit needs a systematic way to track results of the effort to fight trade-based money laundering.
