What are the criteria used by Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the European Union to blacklist jurisdictions at high-risk of money laundering? What are the countries at highest risk according to Panama Papers and FinCEN files? Where do criminals move their illicit money, according to judicial and investigative evidence? This book answers these questions. It is an unprecedented study on the countries at highest risk of attracting money laundering and organised crime proceeds – and how they are identified as such by scholars, policy-makers and anti-money laundering (AML) practitioners. It targets an issue which is central to the policy debate, in the media, but is under-studied. This book is divided into two parts. Part I discusses the concept of money laundering risk, its main determinants, and carries out a review of extant country ratings, ranging from official blacklists and grey lists, to media leaks and scholarly papers. Part II discusses the weaknesses and the myths behind the current ratings and proposes a new approach to assess the risk of money laundering across countries. With a critical research perspective, empirically driven, this book aims to satisfy both scholars and students – in particular from criminology, economics, and international relations – and practitioners from banks, professional firms, and AML authorities.

In The Banker's Blacklist, Julia C. Morse demonstrates how the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has enlisted global banks in the effort to keep "bad money" out of the financial system, in the process drastically altering the domestic policy landscape and transforming banking worldwide. Trillions of dollars flow across borders through the banking system every day. While bank-to-bank transfers facilitate trade and investment, they also provide opportunities for criminals and terrorists to move money around the globe. To address this vulnerability, large economies work together through an international standard-setting body, the FATF, to shift laws and regulations on combating illicit financial flows. Morse examines how this international organization has achieved such impact, arguing that it relies on the power of unofficial market enforcement—a process whereby market actors punish countries that fail to meet international standards. The FATF produces a public noncomplier list, which banks around the world use to shift resources and services away from listed countries. As banks restrict cross-border lending, the domestic banking sector in listed countries advocates strongly for new laws and regulations, ultimately leading to deep and significant compliance improvements. The Bankers' Blacklist offers lessons about the peril and power of globalized finance, revealing new insights into how some of today's most pressing international cooperation challenges might be addressed.

Black Finance will be a valuable and accessible tool for scholars and academics, principally in economics, though also in politics and law, as well as for regulators and supervisory institutions.

In recent years, revelations of grand corruption and the plunder of state assets have led to greater scrutiny of financial relationships with politically exposed persons (PEPs) senior government officials and their family members and close associates. Notwithstanding the efforts by many financial institutions and regulatory authorities to prevent corrupt PEPs from entering and using the financial system to launder the proceeds of corruption, there has been an overall failure in the effective implementation of international standards on PEPs. Implementation of an effective PEP regime is a critical component in the prevention and detection of transfers of proceeds of crime and, therefore, ultimately in the process of recovering them. 'Politically Exposed Persons: Preventive Measures for the Banking Sector' is designed to help banks and regulatory authorities address the risks posed by PEPs and prevent corrupt PEPs from using domestic and international financial systems to launder the proceeds of corruption. The book provides recommendations and good practices aimed at improving compliance with international standards and increasing supervisory effectiveness. It is an important tool for individuals, governments, financial and private sector companies, and international organizations involved in developing and implementing standards aimed at fighting corruption and money laundering, and trying to recover stolen assets and the proceeds of corruption.

The book provides one of the first accounts of AML/CFT legislation in Australia, sets the international policy context, and outlines key international legal obligations. To minimise the negative impact on personal freedoms, it proposes a reading of Australian provisions in line with international caselaw. Expanding her analysis on the international level, the author offers an appraisal of the measures taken, both in terms of criminal policy and cost for civil society. She argues that the development of soft law and the increased powers given to law enforcement agencies, which sub-contract surveillance to the private sector, further erode the legitimacy of State action and the rule of law, and ultimately the democracy the laws were meant to protect.

This book explores the politics of money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) regulation in several countries across Africa and the Small Island States. Developed countries created the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to combat ML/TF globally. Expectedly, the FATF’s standards mirror existing banking regulations within the G7 countries. Yet, the standards apply to all countries irrespective of the limited ML/TF risks they pose to the global economy, their weak pre-conditions for effective regulation and their non-involvement in the FATF’s framing. Still, such countries, mainly within the Global South, have worked hard to amplify their compliance with the regime due to fears of the repercussions of their non-compliance. This collection demonstrates how the global ML/TF regulation is treated as an implicitly superior legal regime where the Global South must comply irrespective of their perception of the FATF’s legitimacy challenges. It shows that beyond exogenous factors such as neo-colonialism, endogenous factors such as weak institutions and corruption undermine the compliance trajectory of the Global South. Furthermore, it analyses the unintended consequences of transplanting FATF standards into diverse legal and cultural contexts. The volume contributes to our understanding of the challenges of transplantation from the Global North and how the Global South is steering within the constraints created by the FATF. It advocates for a comprehensive understanding of the nuanced compliance challenges of developing countries. It further proposes practical solutions to address them, emphasizing the importance of risk-based understanding, accountability, capacity-building and coordination in achieving effective anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing measures. The collection will be essential reading for researchers, academics and policy-makers working in financial crime regulation and international economic law.

The paper advocates leveraging anti-money laundering (AML) measures to enhance tax compliance, tackle tax crimes, and, in turn, help mobilize domestic revenues. While AML measures have already been deployed to improve tax compliance, including during the European debt crisis, the benefits that such measures could bring to the integrity of the tax system are yet to be fully realized. In recent years, the relevance of AML measures for tax purposes resurfaced in public discourse in light of numerous data leaks that provided ample evidence of the closely intertwined nature of tax crimes and money laundering. There might now be the right political momentum for greater utilization of AML measures given post-pandemic calls for a more progressive tax system, elevated sovereign debt burdens, a challenging global economic outlook, and widespread cost-of-living crisis. In this context, the IMF has stressed the importance of rebuilding fiscal buffers, as countries with more fiscal room are better placed to weather the economic slowdown and protect households and businesses.

Through a policy and legal analysis, this book shows how corruption facilitates money laundering, and vice versa. Furthermore, it demonstrates specifically how the responses developed to combat one type of financial crime can productively be employed in fighting the other.

The study of white-collar crime remains a central concern for criminologists around the world and research concentrates on its nature, prevalence, causes and responses. However, most books on white-collar crime tend to focus on Anglo-American examples, which is surprising given the amount of rich data and research taking place in mainland Europe. This new handbook seeks to reset the balance and, for the first time, presents an overview of state-of-the-art research on white-collar crime in Europe. Adding to the existing Anglo-American body of knowledge, the Handbook will discuss specific European topics and typical European features of white-collar crime. The Routledge Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime in Europe consists of more than thirty chapters on topics ranging from the Icelandic Banking Crisis, to the origins of the study of white collar crime, to contemporary topics, such as white-collar crime in countries post-transition from communist regimes; the illegal e-waste trade and white-collar crime in professional football. Furthermore, the book contains extensive case study analyses of landmark European cases of white-collar crime. The editors have gathered together the leading voices in the field and a final section offers commentaries on white-collar crime in Europe from eminent criminologists David Friedrichs and Hazel Croall. This Handbook will thus serve as a work of reference for all scholars and students engaged in the study of corporate and white-collar crime and will also set out directions for new research in the future.

This book considers the ability of island jurisdictions with financial centres to meet the expectations of the international community in addressing the threats posed to themselves and others by their innocent (or otherwise) facilitation of the receipt of suspect wealth. In the global financial architecture, British Overseas Territories are of material significance. Through their inalienable right to self-determination, many developed offshore financial centres to achieve sustainable economic development. Focusing on Bermuda, Turks and Caicos, and Anguilla, the book concerns suspect wealth emanating from financial crimes including corruption, money laundering and tax evasion, as well as controversial conduct like tax avoidance. This work considers the viability of international standards on suspect wealth in the context of the territories, how willing or able they are to comply with them, and how their financial centres can better prevent receipt of suspect wealth. While universalism is desirable in the modern approach to tackling suspect wealth, a one-size-fits-all approach is inappropriate for these jurisdictions. On critically evaluating their legislative and regulatory regimes, the book advances that they demonstrate willingness to comply with international standards. However, their abilities and levels of compliance vary. In acknowledging the facilitatively harmful role the territories can play, this work draws upon evidence of implication in transnational financial crime cases. Notwithstanding this, the book questions whether the degree of criticism that these offshore jurisdictions have encountered is warranted in light of apparent willingness to engage in the enactment and administration of internationally accepted laws and cooperate with international institutions.