Washington, D.C. — Democratic institutions around the world are at risk. A foreign power can exploit systemic vulnerabilities such as gaps in money laundering regulations, lack of corporate transparency, and insufficient anti-corruption measures to undermine democracies and influence elections anywhere, including in the United States. A forthcoming CAP report will analyze the decades-long convergence of President Donald Trump’s business interests with that of Russia’s moneyed elite and consider how this relationship could have become the most explosive example yet of the corrupting power of Russian money. Given the Kremlin’s preference—determined by the U.S. intelligence community—for Trump in the 2016 election, the report will consider how his long-standing business ties with a bevy of figures from Russia and the former Soviet Union could have been exploited in the context of the campaign and beyond.
Please join CAP Action, along with leading national security, Eurasia, and illicit finance experts for a discussion about the challenges at hand and solutions to close the financial loopholes that threaten to corrode American democracy from within.
CAP’s report outlines how certain domestic regulatory gaps—particularly related to corporate transparency, campaign finance disclosure, and money laundering interdiction—pose a threat not only to the U.S. elections but to national security as well. By recognizing the key role that illicit and furtive money plays in the undermining of democratic institutions, the United States should treat money laundering, conflicts of interest, and bribery as the foreign policy threats that they are.
Press are welcome to RSVP by following this link.
WHO:
Introductory remarks:
Neera Tanden, CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Keynote remarks:
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Panel discussion:
Heather Conley, Senior Vice President for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Director of the Europe Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Franklin Foer, National Correspondent, The Atlantic
Diana Pilipenko, Associate Director, Anti-Corruption and Illicit Finance, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Moderated by:
Liz Kennedy, Senior Director, Democracy and Government Reform, Center for American Progress Action Fund
WHEN:
February 14, 2018
12:30 p.m. ET – 2:00 p.m. ET
WHERE:
Center for American Progress
1333 H Street NW, 10th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005
For more information, please contact Morgan Finkelstein at [email protected] or 202-478-5311.