Border crossing - Interpol

It is a maxim of financial crime that while offenders operate freely cross-border, law enforcement’s writ usually only extends to the limits of national jurisdiction. Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organisation, was set up to address this handicap. Alan Osborn explores the role it plays in pursuing launderers.

As befits its wider membership and longer history, Interpol is better known internationally than Europol, the EU law enforcement body (see ‘Eurocop’, MLB October 2006) though it has fewer staff and a smaller budget. But the similarities between the two organisations are more important than the differences. Neither is a hands-on police force. Both work by amassing data drawn from a wide range of different law enforcement agencies, establishing communications between them and feeding back information where needed. Looked at together they provide, at heart, a vast global clearing-house for criminal intelligence - of special and increasing significance in the area of money laundering where the origin and destination of cross-border money flows is of critical importance and impossible for national authorities alone to detect.