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In preparing this report, the compliance sub‐group has set out to (a) summarise the current compliance regime as a matter of law and practice, (b) identify particular problem areas within that regime concerning public sector officials (PSOs), and (c) suggest recommendations for change. The result may be seen as providing features of a ‘model’ compliance structure designed to cause difficulties for corrupt PSOs seeking to launder the proceeds of their corruption; UK law and practice has formed the springboard for the model, but it should be stressed that in order to be of any utility any suggested changes would have to be adopted (effectively) universally throughout the financial world. Piecemeal adoption by one or a few states would merely be likely to drive the tainted monies elsewhere, and would not serve the desired purpose of reducing the extent/profitability of corruption.

Throughout the history of commerce, individuals have searched for informational advantages that will lead to their enrichment. In a time of global capital markets, 24 hours a day trading opportunities, and a professional services corps of market experts, informational advantages are pursued by virtually every market participant. This paper examines one of the most vilified informational advantages in modern capital markets: insider trading. In the USA during the 1980s, insider trading scandals occupied the front pages of not only the trade papers, but also quotidian tabloids. Assailed for its unfairness and characterised by some as thievery, insider trading incidents increased calls for stricter regulation of the marketplace and its participants. In the aftermath of the spectacular insider trading litigation in the USA in the late 1980s, many foreign states began to re‐evaluate the effectiveness of their own regulatory structures. In large part, this reassessment was not the produce of domestic demand, but constituted a response to American agitation for increased regulation of insider trading.

The spectacular performance of the US financial market in recent years, the financial crises in South‐East Asia and Russia and the collapse of one of the most established merchant banks in the world are landmark events in economic history that have prompted concerns around the globe. The advent of the information age and globalisation means that the consequences of these events are felt more readily and extensively than ever before. Sustainability of financial growth and avoidance of future crises raise questions with a common denominator — good governance. With one of the principal financial centres in the world, it is trite to suggest that the need for good governance in the UK cannot be overstated. Protecting investors against abusive and fraudulent practices in the financial services industry has always assumed great importance. Since its emergence as an international financial and trading centre in the 13th century, the City of London has consistently emphasised the values of market confidence and integrity. In the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which is currently being read in Parliament, it is stated that its object is to maintain confidence in the financial markets, to promote public awareness and understanding, to secure an appropriate degree of protection for consumers through recognising the different degree of risks involved in different transactions and the different degrees of expertise and experience of different consumers, and to reduce the extent to which financial undertakings are used for the furtherance of financial crime.

Many scholars of international relations have long argued that by plotting on a map of the world all the transnational contacts of private individuals the international system resembles a ‘cobweb’. While the filaments of the cobweb remain uneven in their magnitude as there is a higher degree of contacts between major centres, the globalisation of financial markets, particularly since the 1970s, has enabled the cobweb to have a more global spread. As importantly, the speed and relative ease with which funds may be transferred across borders has intensified the degree of contact along its filaments. While the intent of this model of world society was to highlight ‘legitimised’ transnational contacts, it has become evident that this cobweb is conducive to spreading security threats emanating from nearly all parts of the globe, as well as being rather effective at hiding the spiders that lurk within it.

When the physical and psychological wall separating East from West crumbled in 1989, the West preferred and encouraged the substitution of free enterprise. The wall's disappearance left a fertile playground for legitimate, as well as illegitimate, business.

One cynic has speculated that years hence people will look back and be forced to conclude that ‘money laundering was one of the greatest problems facing mankind towards the end of the second millennium’. This would be true of lawyers, politicians, economists, sociologists and many others who have sought to examine the problem, each from their own viewpoint. Yet, the persis‐tently non‐definable trend of globalisation has seemingly demonstrated that uni‐causal or uni‐disciplinary explanations of change in the international arena tend to yield unilateral perspectives on problems, solutions to which are subsequently limited in scope.

This article examines the implementation of the Insider Dealing Directive, the aim of which is European harmonisation in the UK and in Germany, two European countries with completely different backgrounds on this issue.

Until recently, the involvement of syndicated and organized criminals in economic crime, and the idea of its exitence outside (and to some extent even within) the United States has been discounted if not scoffed at. Describes the characteristics of organized crime and, specifically, economic organized crime, and its facilitators. Relates some “horror stories” to illustrate the seriousness of the problem. Examines the difficulties involved in combating organized economic crime and some of the efforts to counter it being made at international level.

Some 40 years have now passed since the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began seriously to attack the problem of insider trading in its seminal Cady, Roberts decision. Since then, a complex pattern of regulation has evolved, largely through a common law process of judicial interpretation of the open‐ended anti‐fraud provision of the federal securities laws, Rule 10b‐5. While many interpretative questions still remain open, US law in this area broadly prohibits trading based on material non‐public information when:

The purpose of this paper is to advance debate and prompt new strategies substantially to improve the capacity to disrupt serious profit-motivated crime.

Using interdiction rates (the proportion of criminal funds seized or forfeited) as an interim proxy effectiveness indicator, this article challenges elements of the dominant anti-money laundering/counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) narrative, and reflects on policy effectiveness and outcomes.

Interdiction rates in jurisdictions surveyed hardly constitute a rounding error in the accounts of profit motivated criminal enterprises. The current AML/CFT model appears almost completely ineffective in disrupting illicit finances and serious crime.

With such research at an early stage, some data are poorly substantiated and methodological inconsistencies rife.

For policy interventions with a reasonable prospect for crime not to pay, beyond rhetoric, frank evaluation of results and a potential step-change in policy, regulatory and enforcement vision and capability, may be required.

Scholars have exposed a paucity of meaningful links between AML/CFT controls and crime and terrorism prevention, yet the dominant narrative persists largely unchecked. This paper examines components of that narrative in the context of scholarship on “bullshit”.