(Bloomberg) -- The US Treasury’s No. 2 official said the Biden administration is asking Congress to consider the most serious reforms to the department’s sanctions powers since the terrorist attacks of 2001 to help combat the use of digital assets in illicit finance.

“We are calling on Congress to create a secondary sanction regime,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in prepared remarks on Wednesday. That would go beyond just barring a company from the US financial system, because it “will also expose any firm that continues to do business with the sanctioned entity” to also being cut off, he said.

The Treasury on Tuesday “provided Congress a set of common-sense recommendations to expand our authorities and broaden our tools and resources to go after illicit actors in the digital asset space,” Adeyemo said.

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