160
Blackmun, J., dissenting
with the specific intent that the participating bank or banks not be required to file Currency Transaction Reports for those transactions, would be subject to potential civil and criminal liability. A person conducting the same transactions for any other reasons or a person splitting up an amount of currency that would not be reportable if the full amount were involved in a single transaction (for example, splitting $2,000 in currency into four transactions of $500 each), would not be subject to liability under the proposed amendment." S. Rep. No. 99-433, at 22 (emphasis added).
The Committee's specification of the requisite intent as only the intent to prevent a bank from filing reports confirms that Congress did not contemplate a departure from the general rule that knowledge of illegality is not an essential element of a criminal offense.
A recent amendment to § 5324 further supports the interpretation of the court below. In 1992, Congress enacted the Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act, creating a parallel antistructuring provision for the reporting requirements under 31 U. S. C. § 5316, which governs international monetary transportation. See Pub. L. 102-550, Tit. XV, § 1525(a), 106 Stat. 4064.11 Like the provision at issue here, the new provision prohibits structuring "for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements" (in that case, the requirements of § 5316). At the time Congress amended the statute, every Court of Appeals to consider the issue had held that a willful violation of the antistructuring provision requires knowledge of the bank's reporting requirements and an intent to evade them; none had held that knowledge of the illegality of structuring was required. See n. 3, supra.
11 The new law moved the antistructuring provision at issue here into a new subsection (a) of § 5324 and created subsection (b) for the new antistructuring provision.
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