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Portia Proctor

Portia Proctor is an associate in the Litigation Department and a member of the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations Group. Portia’s experience includes a secondment at the New York City Law Department, where she was a Special Assistant Corporation Counsel in the General Litigation Division handling motions, depositions, and settlement negotiations.

During law school, Portia was an extern at Innocence Canada, where she advocated for wrongfully convicted individuals, and at the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation, where she assisted the Board of Directors with a revision of its by-laws.

Prior to law school, Portia authored a comprehensive report exploring trends in the rulings of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Justices’ voting patterns since 2000. The report was cited in the Court’s Annual Statistics Report. Portia also served as a Special Assistant to a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of Canada.

Portia maintains an active pro bono practice. She has worked with Sanctuary for Families in securing protection for victims of domestic violence, and she supports the New York Courts’ Pandemic Practices Working Group in its examination of the Court system’s response to COVID-19 in an effort to improve access to justice.

Today, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) issued a final rule aimed to ease compliance with certain aspects of the regulations promulgated under the Corporate Transparency Act.  The final rule extends the deadline from 30 days to 90 days for entities created or registered during 2024 that do not qualify for an

As the effective date of the US federal Corporate Transparency Act approaches, FinCEN continues to develop its rules almost on a daily basis. Within the past few days, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) published notice of proposals aimed to clarify and ease compliance with certain aspects of the regulations promulgated under the Corporate Transparency Act. The Corporate Transparency Act requires certain entities (“reporting companies”) to report to FinCEN information about their beneficial owners and company applicants, and is intended to help prevent and combat money laundering, terrorist financing, tax fraud and other illicit activity.[1] The Beneficial Ownership Reporting Rule (the “BOI Rule”), promulgated by FinCEN in September of 2022, establishes who are reporting companies and their beneficial owners and company applicants, as well as what information is required to be reported about these entities and individuals.

In 2021, the U.S. enacted the Corporate Transparency Act (the “CTA”) as part of a multi‑national effort to rein in the use of entities to mask illegal activity.  The CTA directs the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) to propose rules requiring certain types of entities to file a report identifying the entities’ beneficial owners and the persons who formed the entity.  FinCEN issued the final rule on Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirements (the “Reporting Rule”) on September 29, 2022. FinCEN recently published a Small Entity Compliance Guide intended to assist entities in determining whether they are required to file a report and what information will need to be reported.  The Reporting Rule will become effective on January 1, 2024.

On January 1, 2021, Congress enacted the Corporate Transparency Act (the “CTA”) as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021.  Congress passed the CTA to “better enable critical national security, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to counter money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other illicit activity.” The CTA requires a range of entities, primarily smaller, otherwise unregulated companies, to file a report with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) identifying the entities’ beneficial owners—the persons who ultimately own or control the company—and provide similar identifying information about the persons who formed the entity. The CTA also authorizes FinCEN to disclose this information to authorized government authorities and to financial institutions in certain circumstances.