Index-linked corruption

In modelling jurisdiction risk, one of the most popular resources is the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Sue Grossey assesses the importance of corruption for AML professionals and reviews the recently published CPI rankings.

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

I have always thought that one of the most fascinating and frustrating aspects of the MLRO’s job is that of keeping up to date with what the UK government once rather coyly styled “national and international findings”. This definition has been broadened somewhat in the recent updates to the FSA’s Handbook, and now the MLRO is required to have “access to resources and information sufficient to enable him to carry out [his] responsibility” [1]. Personally, I love keeping track of AML (and indeed ML) developments around the world – I find it endlessly absorbing to see what criminals are up to, how they plan to process the money from those activities, and what law enforcement and government agencies are doing to tackle it. I try to assign Fridays as research days, and usually find them very rewarding – despite the assertion of German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun that “Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing”. (I wonder if anyone ever insulted his work by saying, “Well, it’s hardly rocket science, is it?” – when actually it was. He’s the chap who invented the V-2 rocket, and at the end of the war went to the US to work for NASA on Saturn V. And Dr Strangelove is partly modelled on him. But I digress.)