View: Is Brussels taking dirty money seriously?
Andreas Dehio and Dr Kerstin Wilhelm, 22 July 2021
Preventing and combating money laundering and terrorist financing has been on the EU’s agenda for more than 30 years. The legal and regulatory framework has been strengthened steadily. But now the European Commission has taken an ambitious step towards beating financial crime by overhauling the current EU anti-money laundering and countering terrorism financing rules.
The legislative proposals that were presented on 20 July will allow the EU to close any loopholes in the current rules where member states apply them differently, and bolster enforcement of the existing framework. Continue reading “Article: View: Is Brussels taking dirty money seriously?”
The European Union (EU) has proposed banning anonymous cryptocurrency wallets as part of a new set of amendments to counter money laundering and terrorism.
The financial intelligence regulator has warned reporting entities to stay on top of their obligations, following recent changes to the AML-CTF Act that added clarity on know-your-customer requirements and banned certain types of correspondent banking.
The financial intelligence watchdog and big four banks will be probed under a new parliamentary inquiry designed to measure the efficiency and adequacy of the Australia’s anti-money laundering regime.
Money laundering can often be seen as a somewhat nebulous, victimless crime that doesn’t affect the everyday person. But Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit Guidance and Outreach Manager Dr Clara Borg Bonaci tells David Lindsay about how money laundering not only deprives government coffers of funds that could be used for the betterment of society, it also feeds serious predicate crimes such as the trafficking of drugs and arms, human smuggling and child sexual exploitation – ‘horribly destructive crimes that have an immense social cost’
Trade-based money laundering and associated tax evasion is big business. Financial losses from these crimes in developing countries totalled $9 trillion between 2008 and 2017. Global trade complexities make tackling this type of money laundering difficult, but not impossible.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a global data and analytics firm, has published its annual True Cost of Financial Crime Compliance Global Report.
The central bank of South Korea (BOK) announced this week the launch of a second specialist team to supposedly develop a digital currency central bank (CBDC) a year after dissolving their first group of researchers.
Identifying Ultimate Beneficial Owners can be challenging for many regulated firms. Financial criminals are adept at obscuring the true identities of Beneficial Owners by using complex legal structures and shell companies to launder illicit funds. Cross border corruption and money laundering is happening on a much wider scale with fraudsters hiding behind complex corporate structures. 
AI has improved and developed at an unprecedented rate over the past decade. This has been necessary as fraudsters across the globe have also been keeping up with technology, enabling them to create new scams and commit crimes like money laundering: exploiting old means of protection like outdated AML systems. Evidence for this can be seen in the fact that banks in the US faced $10.4billion in fines due to money laundering violations in 2020. 
London-based global data technology company – ComplyAdvantage transforming financial crime detection has announced a fresh investment from Goldman Sachs Growth Equity (“Goldman Sachs”). 