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This paper aims to provide an insight into anti-money laundering (AML) regulations in light of the global AML framework. Specific analysis is drawn using a case study of Bangladesh – the national financial culture within the country is carefully examined to establish the extent to which it is conducive to adopting such frameworks. Particular focus is placed on customer due diligence requirements, and the unique challenges posed by alternative remittance systems. The paper evaluates the impact of globalisation as well as the correlation between developments based on resources available to the respective state.

The research has primarily been conducted through the usage of relevant websites (reports compiled by national and international agencies) and journal articles in electronic format. References have been made to studies and works carried out by authors on the global AML framework.

The internal structural development of Bangladesh must be enhanced and the various social and economic issues must be overcome before a practical AML framework can be successfully implemented.

The lack of published works on AML in Bangladesh is a shortcoming, and more work on this subject is encouraged. The absence of specific AML reports on Bangladesh has resulted in some informed assumptions based on other developing countries.

The research provides a deep insight into the global AML framework, how it can be applied to developing countries like Bangladesh and the drawbacks of implementing a universal framework domestically.

The study provides an innovative analysis, examining aspects of AML regulation in Bangladesh which have not previously been effectively studied.

The purpose of the paper was to examine the challenges inherent in harnessing the UN and other AML counter‐measures, paying particular attention to the United Nations Resolutions on countering financing of terrorism and why the UN Security Resolutions have not been easy to invoke. As regards other AML counter‐measures, the paper examined the legal status of soft law instruments, articulating the possible reasons why they are easy to implement.

The paper was written by the analysis of UN and other AML counter‐measures – which were evaluated in the gaze of how they have been implemented across states. While states are under an obligation to implement UN AML counter‐measures such as international treaties and soft law instruments, private banks as non‐state actors have exploited some loopholes in the law to flaunt them. This has undermined the efficacy of global AML counter‐measures. Many banks have been fined for violating UN sanctions on countries like Iran and Sudan. These examples were utilized in appraising the current UN and other AML counter‐measures across states.

The findings of the paper were compelling in demonstrating that global anti‐money laundering laws are often emasculated by the fact that they are implemented in the realm of international law. International law manifests itself within independent member states' vested strategic self‐interests. In the event of conflicts, national self‐interests will prevail. But again, money laundering is an opportunistic crime because it generates both synergies and externalities and the response of individual states often depends on how it is affected by it. It is wrong to assume as doing things in the realm of international law is not as easy as it is presumed to be.

It would have been better to carry out interviews so as to corroborate secondary data sources used in writing this paper. But due to some constraints, this option was not possible. It would also have been better to undertake the analysis of data based on a large sample of countries rather than cherry picking. While implementing AML counter‐measures in the realm of international law is necessary to foster international co‐operation, there are still some loopholes that need to be paid more attention.

The paper was written, analysed and evaluated based on the most recent literature on implementation of UN and other AML counter‐measures across countries. It also utilized the recent cases involving violations of UN AML counter‐measures by banks on sanctioned countries such as Iran and Sudan.

The paper aims to argue the case for the introduction of a global anti‐money laundering (AML) court. The proposed court as an institution can engender a rule‐based ethos as well as an environment for the transposition of AML regimes and requisite global changes into the society.

The paper was written by exploiting the significance of the court system to the development of any society. In particular, the paper draws on a pivotal role played by the European Court of Justice in enhancing economic integration of European member countries. Another example utilised by this paper was the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) in the WTO. The DSM evolved an effective framework for settling international trade disputes and fundamentally helped to streamline the system. This paper is of the contention that the court would ease the adoption of global AML regimes and consequently ease the co‐existence of countries in relation to global AML initiatives.

The paper has delineated that any global initiatives either on money laundering (ML) or otherwise will have to reside in a form of institutional framework for them to work effectively. Short of that, it is possible that there will be enormous challenges for global AML regimes to function properly as envisaged.

The author is cognizant of the fact that states are still mandated to veto his prepositions based on the principle of sovereignty of nations. States can also refuse to lend their support – in its various dimensions to the proposed court.

It has to be noted that creating global AML regimes that are not going to work is not good enough and in case it amounts to a wastage of scarce resources that would better be utilised somewhere else.

ML in its various manifestations has far reaching consequences for lives of people wherever it is committed and should be accorded the seriousness it deserves.

The paper has been written based on the appreciation of the need to create enforcement mechanisms of engendered global AML/combating financing of terrorism (CFT) regimes. There are so many regimes masquerading as global, having been constituted with the mandate that give them a global reach and yet, they do not live up to their expectation.

Money laundering and grand business corruption continue to plague the global economy, accounting for 2%-5% of the global gross domestic product. Illicit funds, produced through grand corruption, are laundered using complex layering schemes that cloak them in legitimacy by concealing their origins. Lamentably, weak anti-money laundering (AML) frameworks promote economic instability, unjust commercial advantages and organized crimes. This study aims to highlight the need for comprehensive anti-corruption and AML frameworks by critiquing the exploitable gaps in the global AML regime created by heterogeneous state-level AML regimes to date.

This study welcomes the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and the financial action task force (FATF) recommendations but underscores the limitations of their effectiveness by investigating state-level enforcement mechanisms to determine these instruments’ true impact or lack thereof. The mutual evaluation reports (MERs) and state-level AML regimes in the UK, the USA and Canada are analyzed to illustrate the distinct implementation of international soft law in domestic legislation.

This study finds that UNCAC and the FATF recommendations are pivotal steps towards the establishment of a global AML regime for international business, albeit, one that remains imperfect because of the inconsistency of state-level AML frameworks. Consequently, international cooperation is needed to navigate and improve the discrepancies in varied AML legislation.

The author provides an in-depth and balanced analysis of current state-level AML developments and relies upon the recent 2016-2018 MERs to indicate the successes and flaws of various AML legislation. Therefore, this critique may guide stakeholders to construct robust AML frameworks and contributes to academic research in AML.

The paper aims to explore the regulatory environment in less developed countries (LDCs) to evaluate their preparedness to harness normative anti-money laundering (AML) regimes. The global AML/CFT regimes are evolved at a global level but implemented within sovereign states – different regulatory environments and the possibility of regulatory disparities. The fundamental question this paper seeks to answer is whether the global AML framework can be as carefully designed as to afford a level playing field to all participating countries? Is this a possible prospect and if not what should be the way forward? The paper articulates the regulatory environment in LDCs to evaluate its implications on individual state's ability to harness normative AML regimes.

This paper was partly written by an empirical study based on the author's familiar experience in relation to financial markets regulation and the challenges in LDCs. The paper was also partly written drawing on the author's PhD thesis entitled: the Global The thrust of the thesis was to examine the intricacies of the global AML/CFT framework focusing largely on three jurisdictions – UK, Uganda and South Africa. The paper has been written based on these three jurisdictions. The contention of the paper is that while it is necessary for states or oversight institutions to adopt interstate regulatory initiatives on overlapping challenges such as money laundering, the flipside side is that global prohibition regimes often tend to overlook the practical realities in member countries where they are implemented. Finally, this paper proposes the need for a hybrid approach designed to accommodate both the needs of oversight institutions and respective individual countries where envisaged regimes are introduced.

The research findings of the study are that the global market system is fraught with dualities with the potential to resonate differently in each jurisdiction in harnessing desired AML/CFT regimes. The dynamics of development in DCs and LDCs are different and this has different implications for each country in harnessing the envisaged AML/CFT regimes.

The paper was written by internalising the practical experiences of LDCs in harnessing global AML/CFT regimes. While the author has benefited from the scholarly work of others, he has done it in a distinctive way to foster the objectives for writing this paper. This paper is original because it proffers approach that could potentially enhance the study of global prohibition regimes and how they are harnessed in individual jurisdictions.

The purpose of this paper is to underscore the current supranational anti‐money laundering (AML) regimes articulating challenges of harnessing them as a robust framework. Some aspects of the above framework are created under the auspices of the United Nations treaties, some are regional‐based initiatives while others are ad hoc arrangements.

The paper was written on the basis of the supranational framework against money laundering such as the United Nations Convention against drug trafficking and other psychotropic substances. Owing to the limitations of the above AML model law, the paper utilised a qualitative research methodology, exploring a wide range of the current AML regimes. The paper has also exploited the revised AML framework which expands the scope of the offence to encompass, not only proceeds from drug trafficking but also serious criminal activities (smuggling, fraud, serious financial crimes, and the sale of stolen goods). Ideally, the paper has been written based on the provisions of the United Nations Convention against transnational organised crimes and its attendant three protocols adopted in Palermo (2000); and the Financial Action Task Force (2004). The foregoing regimes underscore an essential framework for the study of money laundering and its attendant predicate offences globally.

The findings of the study clearly demonstrate that the current AML framework is not robust enough to caution countries against the threat of money laundering. There is a gaping gap in the law of money laundering within and between regions even though there is a global framework in place. This is presumably the reason why some countries have not fully transposed some aspects of current AML regimes locally.

The gaps in the law against money laundering – both in relation to the way they are created and enforced signify that states still need to do more collectively to stem the threat of money laundering. The current intransigence in application of AML laws in some countries sign‐post the inherent challenges of globalisation of international finance.

While there is a growing body of literature generated on supranational AML regimes, this paper is distinctly based on the interplay of global and local factors in harnessing it. Thus, the research design of this paper is connected by two strands – a review of existing supranational AML framework and the inherent challenges faced by individual states in domesticating it. The paper is also written based on some practical experiences of harnessing global AML regimes in some countries.

Indeed, the value of money laundering globally is between 2% and 5% of the world’s gross domestic product, which represents $800bn to $2tn per year. There is therefore a dire and urgent need to curb money laundering offences at both national and international level. As such, the purposes of this research are to critically analyse the anti-money laundering (AML) laws and regulations of Mauritius, to identify loopholes in inherent in the Mauritian system and to suggest recommendations to enhance the AML laws in the country.

To achieve these research objectives, the study will adopt the black letter methodology by analysing laws and regulations on AML of Mauritius and will also conduct a comparative analysis against the corresponding AML laws of South Africa. In fact, South Africa has been selected for the comparison to assess how Africa’s most powerful economic powerhouse is dealing with issues of money laundering and whether Mauritius may implement some of these measures to enhance its legal and regulatory framework on AML.

The research sets out a comprehensive view on the AML legislative framework of South Africa and Mauritius. It has highlighted the mechanisms used in these two countries to combat money laundering is the risk-based approach. Finally, recommendations have been proposed to improve the existing AML frameworks of Mauritius and which can further protect the financial system of the country. However, these suggestions will depend on the evolution of financial crimes within and outside the jurisdiction, and ongoing amendments will always be required to rigidly protect Mauritius from money launderers.

At present, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study will be amongst the first academic writings on the effectiveness of the legal and regulatory measures undertaken by the Mauritian authorities to deal with AML crimes in the country. The study is carried out with the aim of combining a large amount of empirical, theoretical and factual information that can be of use to various stakeholders and not only to academics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of corruption on the transposition of global anti‐money laundering regimes (AML), such as customer due diligence (CDD) locally.

The global AML framework for purposes of this paper is underscored by the 40+9 recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the principles of the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision. These standards are contained in FATF recommendations 2003; and the FATF nine special recommendations against Financing of Terrorism 2001 (updated in February 2008). The paper examines some aspects of the current anti‐money laundering and combating financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) framework such as CDD and know your customer to highlight the challenges of harnessing the global AML/CFT regimes locally in some jurisdictions.

The paper establishes that money laundering (ML) and corruption are embedded in each other. By way of examples, cases of ML are rampant in highly corrupt countries.

The dichotomy of corruption and its effect negates the global efforts on fighting ML/financing of terrorism.

Corruption in its various manifestations undermines a country's capacity to harness the global framework against ML and financing of terrorism. Thus, the twin offences of corruption and ML should be accorded the same level of attention as serious financial crimes at a global level.

The paper is written based on the challenges of harnessing the global AML/CFT regimes in inherently corrupt governments. It draws particularly on experiences of corruption and ML in some countries in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how well countries comply with global anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations.

With the help of an AML/CFT compliance index composed by the author, this study is able to numerically quantify countries’ AML/CFT compliance levels. Countries were selected based on their membership with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), precisely members who have gone through at least one round mutual evaluation and have duly submitted a report to the task force. The AML/CFT index was composed by assigning numeric values to the individual country ratings across all 49 FATF recommendations contained in their mutual evaluation reports (MER).

Some notable findings include the yearly global level of AML/CFT compliance between the period 2004 and 2016, as well as compliance levels across continents for the same period. Compliance levels for the seven components of the FATF recommendations were also reported to help assess which set of recommendations countries comply with the most and why they do. It was also found that countries’ lack of compliance was as a result of high cost of compliance with FATF recommendations.

The main limitation of this study was a lack of high-frequency AML data of countries, especially less-developed countries.

The uniqueness of this paper lies in the fact that the AML/CFT compliance index constructed and used in the study is the first of its kind.

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.