Michelle M. Gallant

Promise and perils: the making of global money laundering, terrorist finance norms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a preliminary comparison of the formation of money laundering and terrorist finance norms through international conventions and through Security Council resolutions.Design/methodology/approach – The formation of a global approach to criminal finance through the negotiation of international conventions is compared to the creation of a standardized approach through intervention by the United Nations Security Council.Findings – While the formation of norms through the Security Council is efficient, it risks jeopardizing the legitimacy of the institution. Formation through conventions, with the assistance of soft‐actors, however at times glacial, is preferred.Practical implications – The paper implies that the Security Council should seriously restrict any involvement in creating global norms attentive to terrorist funding.Originality/value – The paper critiques global money laundering, and terrorist finance laws through the unique prism of norm formation. It de...

The Seizure of Illicit Assets: Patterns of Civil Forfeiture in Canada and Ireland:

Civil forfeiture is a modern crime control instrument that targets property linked to criminal activity. A recent addition to the states crime control toolbox, the development of civil forfeiture in Ireland and in Canada, shows remarkable resistance to the idea that standard criminal justice safeguards govern the forfeiture process. The stark parallels in these two jurisdictions demonstrate tacit acceptance of a strategy that proves perilous to long-held procedural and substantive rights. By deftly shifting to formally civil instruments, Ireland and Canada have organized an assault on crime that circumvents the conventional criminal law, arguably seriously abrogating rights and procedural justice.

Tax and Terrorism: A New Partnership?

Purpose – This paper has the purpose of being a preliminary exploration of the link between taxation and the contemporary assault on the financial aspect of terrorism.Design/methodology/approach – This is a discussion paper.Findings – Locating the origins of the link in the terrorist attacks of September 2001, it considers the ramifications of the fusion of taxation and international tax havens with terrorist finance.Originality/value – The paper considers the link between taxation and the financial aspect of terrorism.

Canada, crime control and co‐opting legal counsel: canvassing the confidentiality crisis

Traces the development since 1989 of the Canadian anti‐money laundering framework, which involves the obligation on lawyers to report suspicious transactions and not inform the client about this disclosure; previously, it was not an offence to disguise the criminal origin of assets, but the Canadian regime is now one of the world’s broadest. Reports the resistance of the Canadian legal community to involvement in the campaign, partly because the regime is so broad, confusing and cumbersome; it requires significant investment in documentation and is hazy about the distinction between knowledge and suspicion. Critiques the legislative framework, the solicitor ‐ client relationship and the tension between this confidentiality and the reporting function, including the exceptions to the general rule of confidentiality if it is in the public interest.

Funds, Rights and Terror: Her Majesty's Treasury v Mohammed Jabar Ahmed and Others

The case of Her Majestys Treasury v Mohammed Jabar Ahmed and others is discussed to arrive at a better understanding of the legislation pertaining to global money laundering and terrorist finance. The legal framework and the decision in the case as well as its implications are highlighted.

Uncertainties Collide: Lawyers and Money Laundering, Terrorist Finance Regulation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the tentative, highly contingent nature of the contemporary press to impose stringent anti‐criminal finance regulatory obligations onto Canadian legal counsel.Design/methodology/approach – The approach used in this work is to bring together problems associated with different areas of the anti‐criminal finance project in order to demonstrate how these problems compound in the context of the fusion of Canadian lawyers and anti‐criminal finance regulation. It draws chiefly on Canadian law and Canadian and international scholarship.Findings – This paper shows that the tasking of Canadian legal counsel with additional regulatory burdens continues the pattern of developing legal strategies without paying sufficient attention to the actual results that the strategies produce.Practical implications – This paper suggests that any continued construction of an anti‐criminal finance apparatus should be accompanied by enhanced study of its actual ability to generat...

Tackling the Risks of Money Laundering

Money laundering is ubiquitous in modern discourse because of its pervasive links to criminal activity. It bolsters terrorism, underpins much chastisement of financial institutions and their alleged links to drug cartels, expedites tax evasion, undergirds corruption and resonates in political wrangling over financial debacles. It stands accused of causing, or contributing to, any number of crimes shaped, in one way or another, by money.

AML: Maintaining the Balance between Controlling Serious Crime and Human Rights

Anti-money laundering (AML) regulation is arguably a great protector of rights: the right to be free from the corrosive influence of serious crime, the rights of citizens to the return of property illegally appropriated by dictators, the freedom to rely on the financial system without fear that criminal earnings might induce its collapse or the right of a society to taxation revenues that might otherwise flee jurisdictional boundaries under the guise of laundered funds. In offering a measure of resistance to forces that would undermine civil society, the AML strategy champions the broad shared right to a reasonably stable social order.Axiomatically, to protect the parameters of civil society, anti-money laundering regulation must, in its own right, adhere to established principles of justice. To suppress serious crime by dismissing rights fractures the ideal of a civil society and makes those who insist on pursuing the strategy indistinguishable from the very evils they so vehemently desire to control.Canvassing a range of jurisdictions, this chapter explores three recurrent themes of tension between the regulation of criminal finance and rights. The first theme explores conflicts provoked by the reporting requirements of AML law and concepts of privacy or confidentiality. The second deals with interferences that emerge from the merging of the criminal and the civil law, a feature that chiefly relates to the confiscation, or forfeiture elements of AML regulation. The third section investigates conflicts between the regulation of terrorist finance and rights. The conclusion urges a cautionary approach to the AML strategy given uncertainty as to its achievements.

Money laundering consequences

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to take an overarching analytical perspective on four decades of money laundering regulation. Design/methodology/approach – This study extracts the principal impacts of anti-money laundering (AML) regulation through a distillation of money laundering research. Findings – The most significant impacts of money laundering regulation are some recovery of tainted wealth, modest increases in the visibility of global financial transactions, disruption of tax haven jurisdictions and some distortions to international law. Research limitations/implications – This study offers a glimpse of the wider impacts of money laundering underscoring the need for empirical work. Originality/value – The originality lies in linking developments in discrete fields to money laundering regulation.

Tax and the proceeds of crime: a new approach to tainted finance?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate latter‐day statutory initiatives imposing taxes on earnings tainted by crime.Design/methodology/approach – Case‐law analysis of taxation in the context of criminal activity.Findings – The taxation of tainted finance holds some promise for attacking criminal resources though it is not a new strategy.Research limitations/implications – The findings are preliminary and limited chiefly to Canadian and UK law.Originality/value – The paper considers the tax dimension of contemporary debates on criminal finance.