What's Behind the Wolfsberg Principles?

Abstract

The past few years have seen a plethora of anti‐money laundering initiatives. One of the latest is the so‐called ‘Global Anti Money Laundering Guidelines for Private Banking’ formulated at a meeting in Wolfsberg, Switzerland (‘the guidelines’). Other initiatives have been government led. The guidelines were formulated by representatives from the banking industry (in collaboration with Transparency International and Professor Mark Pieth), and launched on 29th October, 2000. They have received a mixed reception in the press. Some have given them a warm welcome, saying they ‘fill … a hole left by government regulators’. Others are less enthusiastic, dismissing them as window dressing to reduce public and regulatory pressure on banks caught out in a series of embarrassing money‐laundering scandals, such as Salinas, Bank of New York and most recently Abacha. There is little doubt that such pressure is part of the reason for the guidelines and they seem to have generated an impression that banks are facing up to this issue, thus reducing pressure.

Citation

Graham, T. (2001), "What's Behind the Wolfsberg Principles?", Journal of Money Laundering Control, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 348-349. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb027285