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This paper aims to increase the transparency of information in official anti-money laundering rating data to assist evidence-informed decision-making in compliance, policy-making and research.

This paper converts anti-money laundering rating data into information-rich visualisations, reintroduces a comparison methodology and ranks all anti-money laundering regimes evaluated to date.

Official anti-money laundering ratings as currently structured and presented offer surprisingly little policy-relevant information. Persistent failure to transform available data into information for knowledge and insight suggests that the risk has been realised that impressionistic judgments or politicised interests drive the policy agenda at least as much as objective evidence or substantive economic and social goals.

Any reluctance to generate policy-relevant information from the industry’s primary data set or disinclination to engage constructively with a growing body of independent critical policy effectiveness evidence calls into question whether implementing anti-money laundering controls with some prospect of achieving substantial societal benefits, or perpetuating the current system, prevails.

With a dearth of scholarship at the intersection of money laundering and policy effectiveness scholarship and practice, this paper combines elements of these disciplines and examines anti-money laundering effectiveness from a different viewpoint. Rather than seeking to measure money laundering or estimate the proportion of criminal proceeds successfully intercepted, this paper draws directly from the anti-money laundering industry’s own “main” data set.

The purpose of this paper is to cut through the rhetoric that shrouds Russia's anti‐money laundering regime to uncover the reality that lies beneath.

This paper relies on both primary and secondary sources in Russian and English that deal with the problems of money laundering in the Russian context. Relevant sections of the Russian Criminal Code as well as Russia's anti‐money laundering regulations have been consulted.

Overall, the Russian anti‐money laundering regime has thus far proved ineffective in terms of meeting its stated purposes of combating organized crime and terrorism. Its limited success stems largely from structural weaknesses in the Russian banking system as well as that industry's lack of a culture of regulatory compliance. Moreover, Russian authorities have opportunistically seized on the current anti‐money laundering regime as a useful tool in the pursuit of ends unconnected to the fight against organized crime and terrorism. The Russian authorities have used the regime to attempt to reform the banking system and to extend their strategic control in the domestic political and business realms. The ineffectiveness of the anti‐money laundering regulations and their usage to achieve ulterior aims undermine the legitimacy of the regime as a whole.

The paper looks beyond the technical difficulties in applying the anti‐money laundering regulations and examines the misuses of the anti‐money laundering regime in the Russian context. However, the problems raised in the paper are not unique to Russia and have relevance to other jurisdictions, especially countries that are members of the Financial Action Task Force.

The author, Director of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations at the SEC, talks about how the anti‐money laundering laws apply to securities firms while also discussing a new examinations initiative that the SEC, NYSE, and NASD are undertaking to focus the industry's attention on compliance programs that detect and prevent money laundering.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the anti-money laundering measures of the UK and Nigeria, to determine what the best approach is. The best approach is likely the one that strikes a fair balance between protecting the financial system against money laundering and promoting financial inclusion.

This paper relies mainly on primary and secondary data drawn from the public domain. It also relies on documentary research.

This paper critically analysed the anti-money laundering measures of the UK and Nigeria to determine that the anti-money laundering measures of Nigeria does not strike a fair balance between protecting the financial system against money laundering and promoting financial inclusion because it does not expressly provide for verification of a customer’s identity at the account opening stage for low risk accounts. The paper, however, determined that the anti-money laundering measures of the UK does strike a fair balance between protecting the financial system against money laundering and promoting financial inclusion because it requires customer identification and verification before the establishment of a business relationship for customers who want to open a basic bank account.

This paper focuses on the anti-money laundering and financial inclusion measures in the UK’s Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism in Banks and Other Financial Institutions in Nigeria) Regulations, 2013.

This paper offers a critical analysis of the anti-money laundering and financial inclusion measures of the UK and Nigeria as provided in the UK’s Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism in Banks and Other Financial Institutions in Nigeria) Regulations, 2013. The paper will provide recommendations on how the measures could be strengthened. This is the only article to adopt this kind of approach.

Money laundering offences occur worldwide, with recent discussions involving issues related to the low levels of compliance among professional accountants towards the anti-money laundering (AML) regime. Under the regime, professional accountants are required to implement compliance programs (Know Your Customer, Clients Due Diligent, Record Keeping) and to submit any suspicious transaction report encounters to the authorities. Due to the lack of research in this sector, this study aims to examine the compliance determinants towards AML regimes among professional accountants in Malaysia.

Premised on protection motivation theory, a questionnaire was developed and distributed among 1,100 professional accountants. Of which 275 questionnaires were returned and subjected to regression analysis.

Based on the findings, “perceived risk of non-compliance” and “awareness of Anti-Money Laundering Act 2001 and Financial Action Task Force standard” were significantly related to the level of compliance towards the AML regimes. Meanwhile, “compliance cost” did not influence the compliance behaviour of professional accountants. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that awareness programs among the reporting institutions should be enhanced, specifically the professional accountants.

This study recommends the professional bodies particularly professional accountants in Malaysia to establish a blueprint as a guideline for money laundering reporting.

This is one of the pioneer studies looking into AML compliance determinants among the professional accountants in Malaysia. This study will provide insights on the current practices and recommend ways to improve the current AML reporting practices among the professional accountants.

The purpose of this paper is to provide some empirical findings on the predicaments of lawyers’ anti-money laundering (AML) compliance in Malaysia and the rationales for such predicaments.

This paper adopts a qualitative research in which the primary data are obtained from seven case studies involving legal firms within the Klang Valley, Selangor, Malaysia, which is triangulated with the data from the Central Bank and the Malaysian Bar Council.

The authors contend that despite the vulnerability of their profession to money laundering, the level of awareness of the AML obligations amongst Malaysian legal practitioners is rather minimal. Also, the imposition of obligations upon them in policing their clients and regulating money laundering is not only onerous but also contrary to the ethics of their profession.

This paper fills the gap in providing the empirical evidence on lawyers’ compliance to their statutory AML obligations in Malaysia. Also, this paper could be a useful source of information for practitioners, academicians and students. It could also be a beneficial guide for policymakers for any possible future amendments to the law.

This paper aims to compute a measure for anti-money laundering/counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance and investigate its determinants.

Using the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations and assigning weights to them, the study computes a measure for AML compliance. Further, the determinants of AML compliance were investigated using ordinary least squares (OLS) data of 155 countries between 2004 and 2016.

The findings suggest that AML compliance have slightly improved over the years. Further, the OLS regression results show that technology, regulatory quality, bank concentration, trade openness and financial intelligence center significantly determined and improved AML compliance.

From the findings, it is evident that countries that wish to improve the AML compliance should focus more on technology, regulatory quality, structure of the banking sector, size of the economy and institution of financial intelligence center so as to enhance AML compliance.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper reveals a first AML/CFT compliance index that measures the cross-country level of AML/CFT compliance from the year 2004 to 2016. Subsequently, this paper adopted an OLS econometric model to identify the key determinants of AML/CFT compliance among member states of FATF.

The paper seeks to provide an alternative and possibly controversial examination of the contemporary anti‐money laundering regulatory phenomenon. It is intended to challenge existing givens and to pose an alternative and challenging view of the reasons and the motives behind the imposition of the international laws and regulations dealing with money laundering.

The paper contains the views of one man who has spent most of his working life examining the money laundering question and it is a single alternative view based upon personal experience.

The findings are not enunciated in the sense that there are research outcomes. It is a question for the reader to interpret and accept or reject the writer's viewpoint.

The paper seeks to encourage a more questioning and agnostic view of current anti‐money laundering practice, with the aim of stimulating more debate on a topic which has for too long been the captive of a small coterie of government agencies.

The paper is challenging in that it represents a complete counter‐blast to every accepted conventional wisdom on money laundering. It is a viewpoint piece.

This paper aims to discuss how feasible it is for intelligent criminals to circumvent existing anti-money laundering mechanisms.

Based upon ten informal interviews with money launderers and their advisers; 18 formal, semi-standardized expert interviews with selected anti-money laundering specialists; and a quantitative survey of 181 compliance officers, 12 effective methods to launder money have been developed.

It has been found that gold, jewellery, raw diamonds, antiquities, art, real estate projects, consulting firms, mergers and acquisitions, banks in Dubai, deposit boxes, private cash deals and currency exchange offices continue to be extraordinarily suitable tools for money laundering.

The identification of gaps in anti-money laundering mechanisms is meant to provide both compliance officers and legislators with valuable insights. While the existing literature focuses on estimating the volume of money laundered in certain geographical areas and on the improvement of anti-money laundering mechanisms, this paper describes how money launderers proceed to avoid getting caught.