Abstract
Fighting financial crime is a highly institutionalised global governance task. At a time of crisis for many of the institutions of global governance, tackling money laundering and combatting terrorist financing through global cooperation continues to be a priority for public officials. The global regime, if anything, is intensifying. This essay provides an overview of the regime’s development and addresses questions of design and implementation. It is structured around three sets of questions: (1) What does the regime look like and what is it for? (2) Who does the work? (3) And, in conclusion, what can we say about winners and losers?
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Notes
For a comprehensive empirical overview and conceptual analysis of different aspects of the regime and the role of FATF in particular, see Nance (2018a) and the special issue of Crime, Law and Social Change.
Member countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong (China), Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA. Member regional organisations: European Commission and Gulf Cooperation Council. A full list of members and observers can be found at: https://www.fatf-gafi.org/about/membersandobservers/#d.en.3147.
There are nine regional task forces: Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering; Caribbean Financial Action Task Force; Eurasian Group; Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group; GABAC (covering Central Africa); Financial Action Task Force of Latin America; Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa; Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force; Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures (part of the Council of Europe).
A number of jurisdictions are also on a monitoring list: this is a more varied list, covering, in early 2020, countries as diverse as Iceland, Mongolia and Syria.
For more on the risk-based approach and the interplay between the regulatory/supervisory side and law enforcement, see the FATF guidance document (FATF 2017).
The Wolfsberg Group of 13 banking leaders: Banco Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan Chase, MUFG Bank, Société Générale, Standard Chartered Bank and UBS.
ACAMS recently introduced an additional certification, that of Certified Global Sanctions Specialist.
There is no shortage of money laundering scandals, and many of the world’s largest financial institutions have been found to have lax procedures at one time or another. In the past couple of years, a number of institutions have been implicated in jurisdictions that are usually assessed to have reasonably robust systems in place, such as in Scandinavia and the Baltics.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the hosts and participants of the workshop ‘The Normative Basis of Global Governance’ held in September 2018 at the Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Shanghai, China, for excellent discussions and feedback.
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Tsingou, E. Fighting Financial Crime: Who Designs Global Governance and Who Does The Work?. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 13, 169–179 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-020-00278-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-020-00278-3