Jackie Johnson

Money Laundering: Has the Financial Action Task Force Made a Difference?

Examines the involvement of the banking sector in money laundering over the last two decades, in particular the relationship between banks and money laundering when governments’ attitudes vary and change. Describes the design of the research, which uses multiple regression, Chow and dummy variable correlation, and partial correlation to compare countries before and after membership of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Lists the countries covered in the analysis: nine are in the FATF and nine are outside it. Lists the countries of the FATF according to whether they have a strong or weak bank/money laundering relationship: Australia, Denmark, Japan, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have a weaker relationship (with Australia giving the best result in terms of successful governmental enforcement of the law), while Germany, Italy, Singapore and the USA have a stronger relationship. Concludes that FATF does make a difference: most member countries have weaker bank/money laundering relationships in their post‐FATF period.

Repairing legitimacy after blacklisting by the Financial Action Task Force

Describes how the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has blacklisted countries which it believes provide laws and practices conducive to money laundering; this blacklisting queries the legitimacy of the country or jurisdiction and its right to conduct financial business in the global environment. Shows how countries react to this challenge and regain legitimacy, and lists the countries concerned according to how quickly they were removed from the blacklist. Concludes that the countries which responded quickest to blacklisting were the wealthiest ones with large service and financial sectors; they were already more likely to be in an anti‐money laundering organisation and to be less corrupt than others in the blacklisted sector.

Bitcoin research across disciplines

ABSTRACT Over the last few years, research on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has snowballed across many disciplines: technical fields, economics, law, public policy, finance, accounting, and others. As the uses of blockchain technology behind Bitcoin expand, more disciplines will be drawn to its study and the research will greatly expand. This paper provides an assessment of the current state of the literature. From a comprehensive search of the literature that resulted in an original sample of 13,507 results, a final sample of 1,206 papers on Bitcoin are categorised and mapped across six disciplines.

Australia’s response to the FATF’s 2003 40 Recommendations

Outlines the Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Anti‐Money Laundering Recommendations, which go well beyond the 1996 version: they are prescriptive and detailed, and they expand reporting bodies to many non‐financial businesses, focusing on the high‐risk areas of customer due diligence and establishing cross‐border correspondent banking relationships. Describes the Attorney General’s response. Indicates the problems for Australia’s compliance with the Recommendations: lack of control of over small businesses and over amateur sleuths who have access to personal details, implementation of a risk‐based system; developing a an identification system acceptable to Australians that does not make identity theft even easier, and the fact that the system is so complicated and costly that non‐compliance becomes a big issue.

11th September and revelations from the Enron collapse add to the mounting pressure on offshore financial centres

Offshore financial centres (OFCs) have again come under the spotlight. They have been accused of aiding terrorists by laundering their financial resources, allowing the funding of terrorism to go undetected. Their role as tax havens have also been highlighted in the collapse of Enron, a company that used OFCs to avoid paying millions of dollars in US tax. In response many OFCs have agreed to freeze terrorists’ assets, tighten money laundering legislation, provide a more open tax system and share information. There are, however, some OFCs that are resisting the mounting pressure to conform to international standards. These will become targets once more in June, 2002, when the Financial Action Task Force starts the process of identifying jurisdictions that ‘lack appropriate measures to combat terrorist financing’.