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The roles and responsibilities of the chief financial officer (hereafter CFO) have evolved dramatically over the past 10 years. This article explores this evolution from a South African perspective by, firstly, presenting an extensive literature review on the matter. Secondly, a unique South African model of the key focus areas for CFOs is proposed. Lastly, the results of a questionnaire administered to the CFOs of FTSE/JSE Top 40 companies are reported. The results revealed significant findings relating to the CFO’s most important current and future role ‐ that of planner and strategist. In addition, CFOs at the top of the corporate ladder expect to focus more on their role as a growth and innovation catalyst. This article also identifies three key areas for future research that will make an important contribution to the continued development of the educational framework for chartered accountants.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, the paper will map Belgian compliance officers' practices and challenges, and second, it makes an attempt to assess the effectiveness of their input in the anti‐money laundering (AML) chain in Belgium: what are actual results of the fight against money laundering?

The research starts from a criminological point of view, studying the preventive AML‐policy by focusing on the compliance function in banks. In order to study this preventive approach more concretely, a survey was sent to Belgian compliance officers, asking about their practices. Second, the available statistics on 13 years of AML in Belgium were studied.

The function of compliance officer implies a number of challenges or “growing pains”; problematic access to information, lack of feedback from the authorities, limited investigative means. Furthermore, although the investments of private organisations in AML have been substantial, the outcome of the AML chain seems modest.

This paper reflects the first phase of an on‐going research (2006‐2009). The results presented here are therefore preliminary.

Belgium implemented a regulatory framework in 2001, obliging the installment of a compliance function within banks. The value of this research lies in the fact that this booming professional group has never been subject of research before, even though they play a crucial role in AML in particular and crime fighting in general. It is therefore of great importance to study compliance officers' views, practices, and opinions in order to get a grip on this new type of “policing”.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss rise and growth of the “compliance industry” in Belgium by looking at the reasons why this industry became such an important element in the battle against money laundering. The “compliance industry” represents the commercial market that surrounds the battle against money laundering. We aim to map this industry and want to explore how this industry fits in the battle against money laundering.

This paper represents the final phase of a PhD research, studying the origins of battle against money laundering and the private actors within this battle, the compliance officers. The research starts from a criminological point of view. This paper is based on a survey of compliance officers and interviews with both compliance officers and members of the “compliance industry”.

The compliance industry is a booming industry on the market on anti‐money laundering. Their services are mainly focused on software packages, advice, training and consultancy. Although this industry has grown as a result of legislation and regulation, there are some problems, mainly related to privacy issues.

For this paper, only a limited amount of corporations within the compliance industry were interviewed, which may result in an incomplete picture of this industry.

Belgium implemented a regulatory framework in 2001, obliging the installment of a compliance function within banks. The value of this research lies in the fact that neither this booming professional group, nor the surrounding market (including the compliance industry) has never been subject of research before.

This paper aims to examine the influence Jones’ Moral Intensity Model (1991) has on the decision-making process of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance officers charged with reporting suspicious money laundering transactions in Jersey.

Ten interviews were conducted to elicit participants’ views on the six dimensions of moral intensity and their influence on the compliance officers’ decision to submit a suspicious activity report (SAR) of potential money laundering.

The findings indicate that the officers’ moral intensity to submit a SAR seems to be heavily influenced by issue-specific contextual factors. Contexts (legal and legislative mandates) seem to have more of an effect on the moral intent and actions of the officers rather than directly affecting the decision to submit a report of a suspicious money laundering transaction.

The paper lays the groundwork for further work in this area and calls on researchers to develop instruments that can enhance the measurements of the dimensions of moral intensity.

The setting (AML in the financial sector) is both timely and extremely interesting to keep studying, particularly in Jersey because of its dubious sensitive particularities.

The study is the first to examine Jersey AML sector through the lens of moral intensity. In this sense, the paper poses interesting questions, namely, to explore the dynamic complexities experienced by compliance officers in Jersey to detect and report suspicious money laundering activities and the decision-making criteria of actually submitting a SAR.

This paper aims to discuss some of the more significant conflicts that a chief compliance officer (“CCO”) may face in implementing a compliance program and to offer suggestions intended to reduce the conflicts and strengthen the advisory firm's compliance program.

Discusses the CCO's degree of independence from the financial adviser, identifies the areas where conflicts of interest most frequently arise, and provides advice on managing potential conflicts.

Potential conflict‐of‐interest problem areas include security valuation, trade allocations, affiliated transactions between the firm and its clients or among the firm's clients, soft dollar transactions, investment performance reporting, and personal trading activities of investment personnel. The CCO should work with the advisory firm's senior management to identify potential violations of the firm's compliance program and establish disciplinary actions as well as escalation procedures for compliance violations. Conflicts can be reduced if the CCO reports to the board of directors of the advisory firm or that firm's parent. The CCO review process should be handled by someone other than an officer whom the CCO monitors. The CCO should seek independent outside sources to help identify and resolve compliance issues.

Provides a guide to potential conflicts of interest from a lawyer who advises investment funds and investment advisers.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 and its amendment – the Trade and Competitive Act of 1988 – are unique not only in the history of the accounting and auditing profession, but also in international law. The Acts raised awareness of the need for efficient and adequate internal control systems to prevent illegal acts such as the bribery of foreign officials, political parties and governments to secure or maintain contracts overseas. Its uniqueness is also due to the fact that the USA is the first country to pioneer such a legislation that impacted foreign trade, international law and codes of ethics. The research traces the history of the FCPA before and after its enactment, the role played by the various branches of the United States Government – Congress, Department of Justice, Securities Exchange commission (SEC), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); the contributions made by professional associations such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICFA), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the American Bar Association (ABA); and, finally, the role played by various international organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). A cultural, ethical and legalistic background will give a better understanding of the FCPA as wll as the rationale for its controversy.

This paper aims to provide an empirical analysis of the effects of regulatory enforcement and customer risk determinants on money laundering risk judgment. The study further explores the moderating impact of regulatory enforcement on compliance officers in the banking and money service business (MSB) sectors. The analysis is conducted to find the important factors that contribute to the issues of risk judgement among compliance officers to establish effective anti-money laundering (AML) and countering financing of terrorism compliance at the financial institutions, as highlighted in the National Risk Assessment Report 2017 by the Central Bank of Malaysia.

An experimental study with four different scenarios of case studies distributed to 124 compliance officers at the banking and MSB sectors was conducted via online platforms. The paper uses a quantitative approach via structural equation modelling.

The result shows a significant effect of customer risk determinants and regulatory enforcement on money laundering risk judgement, taking into account competency as the control measure. A further test on the interaction effects of both determinants shows a significant result on the money laundering risk judgement. The empirical evidence indicated that regulatory enforcement influenced compliance officers’ money laundering risk judgement and suspicious transaction report submission. In other words, the banking and MSB sectors’ AML compliance significantly depends on the regulators’ enforcement activity.

This study is limited to two independent variables: regulatory enforcement and customer risk determinants. Future studies may consider other factors affecting compliance officers’ money laundering risk judgement, such as technical competency, knowledge management, digitalization and technology and ethical issues.

This study provides several theoretical and practical implications. Emphasizing the excellent quality of judgement and, eventually, good quality of reporting the suspicious transactions will not be achieved merely from enforcing fines and punishment, but comprehensive measures must be taken. Increasing the competency and training, educating the compliance officers, supporting the industry and practitioners with incentives and digitalization, enhancing the campaign and awareness among the public and standardizing the policy shall be the good initiatives for the regulatory enforcement to establish.

This paper provides a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge and fulfills the significant gaps in the literature on money laundering, not to mention, the integration between behavioural studies and anti-money laundering compliance, which has scarcely been statistically evident from the research studies.

This chapter applies an “integrative” model to examine the impact and interaction of economic and moral/social factors in the corporate tax compliance context. More specifically, it examines whether social norms moderate the effect of economic factors in this context.

Fifty-five MBA students assumed corporate CFO roles and analyzed a proposed aggressive corporate tax shelter transaction (“tax shelter”). Participants indicated whether they would recommend the tax shelter and answered questions regarding the transaction and their corporate tax compliance views.

Hierarchical Regression results indicate that, in the corporate tax compliance context, decision makers’ norms (moral/social factors) moderate the effect of perceived expected value of aggressive tax transactions (economic factors). More specifically, results indicate that (1) perceived legality of aggressive corporate tax transactions significantly impacts willingness of corporate decision makers to recommend them, even when controlling for perceived economic effect of the transaction, and (2) due to moral/social factors, corporate decision makers often may not support aggressive tax treatments with material positive expected values.

Accordingly, (1) custom and social factors should be integrated into the corporate tax compliance decision-making framework, and (2) campaigns to strengthen corporate tax compliance should focus on the law’s text and intent as well as upon sanctions for noncompliance.

This paper aims to investigate how criminals launder money and finance terrorism through the financial system.

In total, 70 interviews were conducted with criminals and white-collar crime prevention experts, whose responses were subjected to qualitative content analysis. Based on the findings, a quantitative survey of 200 compliance officers was carried out.

The interviews and survey revealed concrete techniques of laundering money and financing terrorism through the financial services industry and its affiliates. Evidently, the compliance mechanisms aimed at preventing money laundering and terrorism financing can be easily circumvented.

This study’s findings are limited to the perspectives of 70 interviewees. Hence, it is possible that a study with a larger sample conducted in different countries or at a different time could have yielded different results.

Identifying the concrete methods of laundering money and financing terrorism should provide both compliance officers and legislators with valuable insights into criminal activity. By better understanding the specific steps taken by criminals, compliance officers should be able to more effectively combat both money laundering and terrorism financing.

While prior literature focuses on the organizations and mechanisms involved in combating money laundering and terrorism financing, this paper instead explores how criminals avoid detection by taking into account existing compliance mechanisms and criminal perspectives.