What is it about?
The purpose of this paper is to advance debate and prompt new strategies substantially to improve the capacity to disrupt serious profit-motivated crime. This paper reveals anti-money laundering regulations “almost completely ineffective” in disrupting the proceeds from serious crime. Interdiction rates in jurisdictions surveyed hardly constitute a rounding error in the accounts of profit motivated criminal enterprises.
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Why is it important?
Scholars have exposed a paucity of meaningful links between money laundering controls and crime reduction and prevention, yet a dominant narrative persists largely unchecked, continuously extending such controls. This article examines components of that narrative in the context of scholarship on “bullshit”. For policy interventions with a reasonable prospect for crime not to pay, beyond rhetoric, frank evaluation of results and a potential step-change in policy, regulatory and enforcement vision and capability, may be required.
Perspectives
For crime not to pay, beyond rhetoric, a step-change in vision and capability may be required. But the study ends positively. This research suggests that standard responses to policy failure, such as more regulation, or removing regulations as a failed experiment, may not be the answer. If the system focuses on what works, the solution might ultimately involve less, more effective, regulation; better results and less costly.
Dr Ronald F Pol
La Trobe University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Uncomfortable truths? ML=BS and AML=BS2, Journal of Financial Crime, March 2018, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/jfc-08-2017-0071.
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