The situation in Ukraine continues to worsen. The United States continues to make proud proclamations about the tough sanctions being imposed on wealthy Russians with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Congress just struck down a $30 million increase in funding for the IRS Criminal Investigations Unit, which plays a key role in enforcing sanctions, alongside the U.S. Treasury.
Notably, several Treasury officials stated the value of having a fully funded IRS Criminal Investigations Unit to support their enforcement efforts, so why isn’t Congress listening?
It’s no secret (or obscure detail) that financial interests cross national borders and wealthy people frequently have significant assets abroad, including wealthy Russians with financial interests in the U.S. economy. Oligarchs and their ilk also have a vested interest in hiding these assets from being fairly taxed, and have extremely sophisticated means of doing so. See the “Pandora Papers” for far too many relevant examples of these points. In other words, there absolutely is overlap between the IRS doing its job to enforce U.S. tax laws and putting real teeth into these sanctions that are intended to make Putin reconsider his horrific war of aggression against Ukraine.
So why the lack of Congressional support for funding this critical mission — one that, quite frankly, would more than likely pay for itself along the way by enforcing U.S. tax law on vast hidden wealth? Once again the bold rhetoric is mismatched with feeble actions.
Meanwhile, Ukraine gets bombed into oblivion, and Putin and company simply shift their wealth to assets where sanction enforcement continues to lack the funding and investigative personnel to be effective.
There really is no justification for this failure.
Annamarie Saenger
Temple