Money Laundering Bulletin

The UK plays a high-profile role in international initiatives to fight money laundering and terrorist financing; its record on combating corruption is woeful by comparison, a dichotomy which prompts the question, is UK AML more polemical than effective when it comes to tackling corruption? Transparency International-UK decided to find out. Their conclusions - set out here by Chandrashekhar Krishnan, Executive Director, TI-UK – show that there is a very long way to go.

In this year’s MLB series on the development of an international profession of anti-money laundering (AML) specialists, we have often examined the work of those at the sharp end, writes Alan Osborn, but that is not the whole story of course. Every profession has to work in a legal framework, and given money laundering is international in scope, it is no surprise that global organisations are of particular importance in this regard in the AML world. Here we look at the agenda setters.

Turkey needs investment badly in the wake of the financial crisis and is not asking too many questions about the provenance of funds; as much as 40% of the population is unbanked; and the country is the main corridor for heroin into Europe, a trade controlled by PKK terrorists. The combined threats weigh heavily on Turkey’s ambitions to join the European Union as Paul Cochrane reports from Beirut.

Susan Grossey may be contacted on tel: +44 (0)1223 563636; email: susan@thinkingaboutcrime.com

The regulated sector for AML/CFT purposes now extends far beyond its original financial services perimeter but it should be expanded further still, argue Ross Delston [1] and Stephen Walls.

More than a letterbox or sorting office for suspicious activity reports, financial intelligence units are starting to realise their potential for analysis and impact on crime but the relationship with industry is not universally smooth. MLB’s international correspondents take soundings on their local FIUs: Alan Osborn reports from London; Lucy Jones from Dallas, Texas; Raghavendra Verma, is based in New Delhi; Julian Ryall in Tokyo; and Karryn Miller writes from Auckland.