Source: CoStar — 

The nation’s financial crimes regulator has issued final rules boosting U.S. efforts to prevent money laundering.

The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, set new regulations and a deadline for corporations and limited liability companies to report their true owners.

The reporting rules, which take effect Jan. 1, 2024, were mandated under the Corporate Transparency Act enacted last year. They come as the U.S. has stepped up efforts to identify Russian oligarchs and their U.S. assets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

The rules also greatly expand FinCEN’s earlier efforts to identify people who have tried to launder money through the purchase of high-value residential properties in major markets across the country. The new regulations, which make it harder for buyers to hide the identity of commercial real estate purchasers behind entities such as LLCs, are in addition to those previous efforts and do not supplant them, a FinCEN spokesperson told CoStar.