Today I have the honor of moderating a remarkable panel at the World Bank as part of its Law, Justice, and Development week. The panel entitled “Clean Solutions for Dirty Money: Closing the Implementation Gap” will look at the current status of the global anti-money laundering (AML) legal regime and the need for possible reforms, including such questions as whether there is any concrete, empirical evidence that the regime actually works and whether the compliance costs associated with the regime outweigh whatever effectiveness there is in the system. There are also growing questions over the “opportunity costs” associated with the existing AML regime such as the huge amounts of money being spent on compliance as well as humanitarian costs associated with the restriction on money transfers and movement.
The panel will be held from 2-3:30 pm on Monday in the Preston Auditorium at the World Bank in Washington D.C. The panel was organized by the Hon. Delissa A. Ridgway, Judge of the United States Court of International Trade, who remains one of the most influential figures globally in bringing together legal, political, and academic figures to discuss pressing problems in our world. This is only the latest product of her work around the world in bringing experts together in these forums. The panel today will include some of the best known names in the area:
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Richard Lalonde, Senior Financial Sector Expert and Coordinator, Anti-money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Assessment Program, IMF. He has been a member of the IMF delegation to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and represents the IMF in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) AML Experts Group. He joined the IMF in 2003 by way of the Canadian Department of Finance where he was responsible for domestic and international AML/CFT issues and was head of the Canadian delegation to the FATF. |
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Terence Halliday, Co-director, Center on Law and Globalization, American Bar Foundation and University of Illinois College of Law; Research Professor, American Bar Foundation; Adjunct Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University; Adjunct Professor, Regulation Institutions Network, School of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. |
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Jody Myers, Vice President, Compliance Department, Western Union Company; Former Assistant General Counsel and Head of the Financial Integrity Group, Legal Department, IMF. |
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Jean Pesme, Practice Manager, Global Practice, Finance & Markets, World Bank. |
That is an extraordinary panel to address these growing concerns over the AML regime.
Here’s a heads up. The Powers That Be will soon be proposing the elimination of cash. They want ALL transactions to be digital so that EVERY financial transaction will be observable by the NSA and our beloved Homeland Security. Hmmm, more control over the sheeple….but we will be safer from terrorist who hate us for our freedoms…wwwhhhhaaa, waaiiitt…our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms they hate us for are being taken away in order to fight the terrorists who hate us for our freedoms?………..
OUR CONSTITUTION MATTERS. Don’t let fear (which is currently being whipped up by the main stream media) cow us into relinquishing our rights set out by our Founding Fathers. Those old ass white dudes knew about abuse of power, and how keep it in check. Let’s actually follow the Constitution…I know, a novel thought, but hey, let’s give it a shot.
What i dont get is why if hsbc plead guilty to the crime of money laundering….no one is in jail. And why the whistle blowers go to jail. Instead. If they want to defend that laundering is not a crime then make them. Does it not take a “knowingly” mens rea? Too big to jail.
He will, laundered cash in small denominations
I presume you will be well and sufficiently compensated.
The Miami skyline was built w/ laundered Colombian cocaine money.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Look no further that FATCA.
Money Laundering.
Targeting money that is ostensibly the proceeds of a crime.
There is just so much wrong with the whole idea.
If you want to take money away from a criminal who has gotten it illegally, like stealing it, you impose fines and restitution.
Money earned that was not stolen or fraudulently taken should not be illegal itself.
Money laundering crimes have same pedigree of logic as civil forfeiture, and in some ways worse.
It tries to deform the laws of nature, and assert that such money cannot be anyone’s except the state’s.
Then to go steps further, and preemptively say you cannot do with your money what you want, e.g. save it without reporting that you are saving it, or how you care to save it, or proving where you got it, at risk of being charged with a felony, when there is no proof that anything illegal had occurred.
Government has gotten so outrageously intrusive, it now will micromanage the very decisions you make about your own money, whether legally obtained or not.
It is systemically sick, and smacks of the same kind of logic from medieval times, not an enlightened modern era.
You never want to launder money at a laundry mat. Another mistake is to have the hired help do the washing or drying. Never hang it on a line but use a dryer on low heat. Coins? Don’t bother. Too noisy. Money gets dirty when it gets into the wrong hands. Coal minors can be the worst. Which is why the topic about prosecuting minors in Missouri is relevant. Dirty money does not really do any damage in the real world. Money is just a device for trade. In the old days one traded a bag of sugar for a barrel of apples. Now one has Appl trade on the New York Stock Exchange and the owners of the apples do quite well. Some republiCon just got prosecuted for some aspect of money laundering. Where he got the money should be the topic of his prosecution. He was a public servant. Yet he had millions. He broke the American canon: Millions for defense but not one cent tribute. His name is Hastert. In younger days when he was a Speaker he was porking minors. Not in coal mines. In recent years he was paying off the victims. He did not go near a laundry mat and there was indeed no evidence of dirty money or recently cleaned money. Just tribute being paid. Now his defense is : went in dumb, come out dumb too. Me, I would rather sit on a step than sit on a panel.
I thought at first you were going to moderate a panel on how the World Bank is engaged in money laundering. Now that would be a panel!
AML is certainly needed.