Financial Technology Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5036, the Financial Technology Protection Act. Before I begin, I would like to thank the Financial Services Committee Chair Hensarling and Ranking Member Waters for their support in helping to guide this bill through the committee process. I am very pleased that this legislation was passed through the committee unanimously when it was marked up back in July.

I would also like to thank my colleague from North Carolina, Mr. Budd, for his good work on this important legislation. This has truly been a bipartisan effort.

Mr. Speaker, by a strange coincidence, I was actually elected in the Democratic primary in Massachusetts on September 11, 2001, the day of the attacks on the United States in New York, the Pentagon, and in western Pennsylvania. Since my arrival here in Washington and throughout my time in Congress, I have taken an active interest in cutting off the flow of funding to terrorists and other illicit actors.

I am very pleased to say that many of my colleagues, Democratic and Republican, have likewise approached this work with the deliberate and relentless sense of purpose that has lifted us above the petty squabbling that sometimes causes us to fall short of the high expectations of the American people.

Over the years, this work has taken me dozens of times to many countries in the Middle East, to Amman, Jordan, a major banking center, where members of our committee urged and assisted that nation to establish its first financial intelligence unit. It must, of course, be noted that we had the robust and earnest cooperation of King Abdullah of Jordan in that effort. He is someone who, I believe, has, over the years, been the greatest friend that freedom-loving people have in the Arab world.

Members of this committee also worked to expand geographic targeting orders to help the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network crack down on money laundering as part of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.

Similarly, in Afghanistan, Morocco, Tunisia, and throughout the Persian Gulf, our committee has coaxed and guided our international neighbors to adopt methods that secure the legitimate banking system from terrorists and criminal exploitation.

From this work it has recently become clear to Mr. Budd and myself that terrorists and criminal actors are increasingly relying on digital currencies, including bitcoin, to fund their illicit activities.

For example, in August of 2015, a Virginia man was sentenced to 11 years in prison for providing material support to ISIS. He admitted to using Twitter to provide instructions on how to use bitcoin to mask the transfer of funds to that terrorist group. Also, in December of 2017, a woman in New York was indicted for bank fraud and money laundering for supporting terrorists. She is alleged to have spent about $62,000 in digital currency to engage in a pattern of financial activity designed to ultimately benefit ISIS.

I am very pleased that the legislation before us today helps address this emerging threat in multiple ways.

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Mr. LYNCH. As my friend, Mr. Budd, has noted, this bill establishes a public-private sector task force to research terrorist and criminal uses of new financial technologies, including digital currencies, and then develops countermeasures to thwart such terrorist and illicit uses.

The bill also establishes a fund to pay rewards to people who provide information leading to the conviction of an individual involved with terrorist use of digital currencies.

Finally, the bill creates a grant program for the development of tools and pilot programs to detect terrorist and illicit use of digital currencies.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I thank the chairman and ranking member, as well as my Republican cosponsor, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) and urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this important legislation.

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