Sending money abroad

SECURITY CLEARANCE Q&A
1

Hi.

I have a question about sending money abroad. My wife and I were considering sending money abroad and wanted to know how that could affect a clearance.

The specifics:

-We both hold TS.
-My wife has family in Armenia. Most are not foreign contacts because she talks to them once every 5 years or so.
-One family had a death in the family, so we were thinking of sending a few thousand dollars to help them out.
-A question on the SF-86 is “have you ever provided financial support to a foreign national?”. My assumption is that we would then have to answer “Yes”.
-This would be intended as a one time thing.

The question:
I have read various things on this. According to Guideline B regarding foreign influence, supporting a foreign national (even once) could indicate foreign influence. Some even said levels of foreign influence could get your SCI pulled, and then following that your TS and then S.

Does this sound like a threat to our clearances, because it is making me nervous reading about it. I also don’t want to confuse an investigator in the future because this family isn’t a foreign contact (extremely infrequent contact).

Thank you for any help.

2

No one can answer your crystal ball type question completely, it may or may not effect your clearance.

The one time send will mitigate it but honestly, sending a few thousand to family and then stating they are non-foreign contacts is going to be a hurdle. You obviously are tied to them by loyalty, affection, obligation and/or common interest. You have continuing contact as you know where to send them money as well as close enough contact to know there was a death in the family.

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3

I agree with fed-investigator. You’ll have to report the support but trying to argue that the person you send it to is not a foreign contact is all but a losing battle.

Frankly, I’d probably even list the family that y’all have limited contact with. It’s just better to be safe than sorry.

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