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Switzerland, three men were convicted and jailed for laundering $47 million obtained from heroin sales in United States pizza parlors. The scheme involved some 500 people in Switzerland, New York, Italy, and Turkey, who sold some $1.65 billion worth of heroin through the so-called "pizza connection." The sentences imposed ranged from two to 13 years, and the men were fined a total of $82,000.

Section nine of our bill sets out a new Chapter 202 in Title 18 dealing with criminal and civil forfeitures. (It is drafted in such a way that is is easily modifiable if at some later time the Congress thought another Title 18 offense ought to have a forfeiture remedy). It provides for the civil forfeiture of all funds or monetary instruments involved in the violation of the money laundering offense, and of the receiving proceeds offense if the proceeds were obtained in violation of either a federal or foreign felony provision pertaining to controlled substances. The provisions for accomplishing civil forfeitures are patterned after the civil forfeiture provisions in Title 21. The new chapter also provides for the criminal forfeiture of money or other property involved in a violation of the money laundering or receiving proceeds offense. Criminal forfeiture would apply to any violation of the new receiving proceeds offense, not just the receiving of money or property derived from a drug crime.

In addition to setting out new offenses and other sanctions, H.R. 2785 also contains several provisions designed to make easier the investigation of money laundering and the tracing of the proceeds of crime. These amendments generally concern the

Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act in Title 31 and the Right to Financial Privacy Act in Title 12 and were addressed by Mr. Keating, from Treasury, last week. However, I would point out that H.R. 2785 contains a procedural provision in Section

Section 4

4 that is a matter of concern to this Committee. essentially complements the amendments to the Right to Financial Privacy Act made in section three.

Section 3 would amend the Right to Financial Privacy Act to define and clarify further the extent to which financial

institutions may cooperate with federal law enforcement

authorities in providing information which is relevant to crimes by or against financial institutions, violations of the Bank

Secrecy Act in Title 31, 7/ violations of the new money

laundering offense, and violations of certain serious drug crimes. The effect of this amendment to the RFPA is to allow a bank or other financial institution to provide information which it has reason to believe may be relevant to one of these crimes without risking civil liability under the Act or entailing any obligation to notify the customer of such cooperation which the Act requires. The bill also provides for preemption of this field, thus avoiding the possibility of a bank employee incurring in civil or even criminal liability under a more strict state

7/ The Bank Secrecy Act includes the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act. The CFTRA was enacted as Title II of P.L. 91-508 and is now codified at 31 U.S.C. 5311-5322. Together with Title I of P.L. 91-508, it is commonly called the Bank Secrecy Act.

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statute, for cooperating with federal law enforcement

authorities.

Section 4 contains an analogous provision that would amend Rule 17 (c) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to clarify the authority of the United States District Courts to issue orders commanding a person to whom a subpoena duces tecum is directed not to notify, for a specified period, any other person of the existence of the subpoena. Like the amendment to the Right to Financial Privacy Act negating the financial institution's obligation in certain situations to notify the customer that it has provided evidence of crime to law enforcement authorities, this provision is intended to prevent disclosure by third party record holders, such as banks, of legitimate law enforcement interest in the records subpoenaed by a grand jury. Such premature disclosure obviously has a high potential for impairing the investigation and should not be tolerated.

I would now like to address some features of the money laundering and related provisions in other bills pending before

the Committee.

Let me turn first to H.R. 1367 and to H.R. 1945. H.R. 1367 sets out the new money laundering offense recommended by the President's Commission on Organized Crime as Title I, and H.R. 1945 makes only minor stylistic changes in this approach which it

sets out as Title II. 8/ While our bill is derived in part from

this approach, as I have indicated there are significant

differences.

First, the money laundering offense in H.R. 1367 and 1945 would be limited to money laundering through financial institutions. That is too restrictive as it would not reach money laundering by such methods as directly purchasing businesses, real estate, jewelry, etc. Nor would it help in an actual case which I can describe only generally because certain aspects of it are unresolved. In this case an attorney, whose clients were drug traffickers who generated large amounts of cash, hired a private investigator to receive, hold, and distribute the cash at the attorney's direction. In fact, well over $1,000,000 of this money was handled by the investigator in a six month period. Some of it was used to acquire boats, aircraft, and real estate and to make improvements to this property. In our view, the new money laundering offense should be applicable to cases such as

8/ These are the only changes in Title 18 set out in the two Bills with the exception of Title III of H.R. 1367 which amends part of the federal wiretap statute (18 U.S.C. 2516). This Title in H.R. 1367 would make the new money laundering offense one which could be investigated by the use of court-ordered interceptions of communications. A similar provision is in section six of the Administration's bill which also makes the new money laundering offense a predicate offense for the ITAR statute (18 U.S.C. 1953) and a RICO predicate (18 U.S.C. 1961). Moreover, Title III of H.R. 1367 would make a now-unnecessary change in 18 U.S.C. 2516 by making a violation of 31 U.S.C. 5322 concerning the failure to file currency transaction reports an offense which may be investigated by court-ordered wiretaps. Such a change was made by Section 1203 (c) of P.L. 98-473 (The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984).

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this even though a financial institution was not involved. Accordingly, the money laundering offense in the Administration's bill, would apply whenever the transaction involving the proceeds of a crime can be shown to affect interstate or foreign commerce or to be conducted through a financial institution which is engaged in or the activities of which affect interstate commerce. Second, as I have already discussed, the scienter standard

in H.R. 1367 and H.R. 1945 is too broad. These bills would punish one who was merely negligent in engaging in a transaction involving the proceeds of a crime. Although negligence in this area is certainly reprehensible, we think criminal liability should be reserved for persons who had actual knowledge that the funds involved were derived from a crime or who acted in reckless disregard of that fact.

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Third, H.R. 1367 and H.R. 1945 would only proscribe the laundering of money derived from certain listed federal felonies. While the list is long and cover offenses most likely to produce "dirty money" it closely follows the list of crimes that are predicate offenses for the RICO statute, 18 U.S.C. 1961 -- we can see no valid reason to limit the offense to laundering money derived from these crimes while not covering money derived from such heinous federal offenses as Presidential assassination and espionage, and such state offenses as gambling and prostitution. In short, we would prefer the new money laundering offense to cover the proceeds of any federal or state felony.

Fourth, H.R. 1367 and H.R. 1945 describe the offense as conducting "a transaction or series of transactions." The