When Congress overrode President Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act on January 1, 2021, it enacted the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA), which was part of the defense authorization bill.  In doing so, Congress implemented the most sweeping anti-money-laundering statute since the USA PATRIOT Act.  In addition to a number of regulatory reforms and new disclosure requirements, the AMLA has put into place new whistleblower protections, adding to the range of statutes that have effectively created anti-retaliation provisions...

This newsletter provides a status update on the most important (draft) legislative proposals in the field of Dutch company law and looks back at some of the legislation that entered into force in 2020. PENDING LEGISLATION Bill on the management and supervision of legal entities The Management and Supervision of Legal Entities Act (Stb. 2020, 507) will enter into force on 1 July 2021. This act standardises the rules on the management and supervision of legal entities and will have consequences for...

In the last decade alone, the accounting industry has seen general ledgers evolve drastically from paper and Excel-based programs to more sophisticated platforms. But even with the widespread availability and cost-effective features of these new tools, many nonprofits are still relying on general ledgers that are local to the organization's devices or housed in onsite servers that require VPN login when working remotely. The COVID-19 pandemic was a stark reminder of the limitations these systems impose on a finance department's...

On January 1, 2021, Congress enacted the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (the “AML Act”), which contains the most significant reforms to U.S. AML laws since the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. Below are some key provisions of the AML Act, and here is a more detailed description of the statute’s major provisions. Key Provisions Beneficial Ownership Registry. Creates a new, long-awaited central registry for beneficial ownership information of shell companies and other smaller, less regulated entities, which will be available to financial...

The European Fund for Strategic Investments has been one of the good news stories to emerge in a decade of economic uncertainty. It has gone well beyond its highly ambitious target of €500 billion in mobilised investments. The Juncker Plan has made a strong contribution to the 14 million jobs created in the EU between 2015 and 2020. EFSI has become a success in co-financing projects that otherwise might not have been carried through. It has also charted the path...

Undoubtedly, the most pressing issue on President Joseph R. Biden’s agenda is the COVID-19 pandemic which, in his own words, “silently stalks” both the United States and the globe. Remarks he made during his inauguration speech that the US may be entering “the toughest and deadliest period of the virus” coupled with Thursday’s sobering headlines that the number of American virus related deaths had surpassed the country’s troop fatalities in World War II, only serve to underscore the point. To...