By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 19, 2025 ~

On February 10, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that suspended the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for 180 days, giving an all clear to U.S. corporations to bribe officials in foreign countries to get business deals approved. The order bars federal prosecutors from starting any new FCPA investigations, enforcing new actions and orders a review of existing FCPA investigations to “restore proper bounds” on applying the FCPA law.

The FCPA, enacted in 1977, has been the law of the United States for almost half a century. In July 2020, the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission issued a comprehensive and updated guide to the FCPA. It explained its purpose as follows:

“Foreign bribery is a scourge that must be eradicated. It undermines the rule of law, empowers authoritarian rulers, distorts free and fair markets, disadvantages honest and ethical companies, and threatens national security and sustainable development. This updated Guide is meant not only to summarize the product of the dedicated and hardworking individuals who combat foreign bribery as part of their work for the U.S. government, but also to help companies, practitioners, and the public — many of whom find themselves on the front lines of this fight —prevent corruption in the first instance. We hope that the Guide will continue to be an invaluable resource in those efforts.”

In early March the Trump administration gutted another anti-corruption law, the Corporate Transparency Act.

The Corporate Transparency Act became law in 2021. Its goal is to curb anonymous shell companies from money laundering in the U.S. behind a dark curtain. It requires that the true owners of these shell companies must file that beneficial ownership information into a federal registry established by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and it imposes stiff fines and up to two years in prison for failure to do so.

Quietly, with little fanfare on March 2, Trump’s newly installed Treasury Secretary (hedge fund honcho Scott Bessent) announced that he would not enforce the Corporate Transparency Act as the law was written. The statement from the Treasury Department said this:

“The Treasury Department is announcing today that, with respect to the Corporate Transparency Act, not only will it not enforce any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule under the existing regulatory deadlines, but it will further not enforce any penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners after the forthcoming rule changes take effect either. The Treasury Department will further be issuing a proposed rulemaking that will narrow the scope of the rule to foreign reporting companies only. Treasury takes this step in the interest of supporting hard-working American taxpayers and small businesses and ensuring that the rule is appropriately tailored to advance the public interest.”

We have read regulatory announcements by the U.S. Treasury Department for decades. We have never read anything from prior administrations that is so unprofessionally constructed or that so brazenly thumbs its nose at duly passed laws by the U.S. Congress.

These two bizarre rollbacks of anti-corruption legislation raise the obvious question: Who benefits?

Donald Trump himself comes to mind.

In March 2017, USA Today published an explosive expose that revealed the following:

“Trump’s privately held company works through a network of subsidiaries and partnerships that make direct connections hard to trace, particularly since he has refused to release his tax filings. In addition, some of the Trump Organization’s investors and buyers operate through shell companies and limited liability corporations that hide the identities of individual owners.”

The article drilled down further to these specifics:

“•  A member of the firm that developed the Trump SoHo Hotel in New York is a twice-convicted felon who spent a year in prison for stabbing a man and later scouted for Trump investments in Russia.

“•  An investor in the SoHo project was accused by Belgian authorities in 2011 in a $55 million money-laundering scheme.

“•  Three owners of Trump condos in Florida and Manhattan were accused in federal indictments of belonging to a Russian-American organized crime group and working for a major international crime boss based in Russia.

“•  A former mayor from Kazakhstan was accused in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in 2014 of hiding millions of dollars looted from his city, some of which was spent on three Trump SoHo units.

“•  A Ukrainian owner of two Trump condos in Florida was indicted in a money-laundering scheme involving a former prime minister of Ukraine.

“…What’s more, Trump and his companies have had business dealings with Russians that go back decades, raising questions about whether his policies would be influenced by business considerations.”

In 2008 Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told Russian media while he was in Moscow that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. There’s indeed a lot of money coming for new-builds and resale reflecting a trend in the Russian economy and, of course, the weak dollar versus the ruble” according to USA Today reporting in December 2016.