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The purpose of this paper is to examine the broad concept of forfeiture, its legal positions in the UK and Malaysia, and to highlight the implications of such forfeiture systems and legislations.

This paper uses a doctrinal legal analysis and secondary data, which analyses primary sources, the POCA (2002) and the AMLATFA 2001, and secondary sources including case law, articles in academic journals, books and online databases.

The authors contend that the civil forfeiture system and law have far-reaching implications, affecting not only law enforcement agencies, but also on property owners, the courts and bona fide third parties. Also, civil forfeiture law as contained in AMLATFA 2001 represents one of the most serious encroachments on private property rights. Not only that, such a legal rule has made property, and not the owner, guilty until proven innocent.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the concept of terrorism, terrorism financing, the relationship between money laundering and terrorism financing and the governance of terrorism financing.

This paper adopts a doctrinal, content analysis and secondary data, of which the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001 and the Penal Code are the primary sources. The secondary sources for this paper include articles in academic journals, books and online databases.

Several methods are involved in the commission of terrorism financing such as raising, moving and using of funds. The activities relating to terrorism financing under the Penal Code are broader than such activities. Despite the adherence by Malaysia to international policies established by the Financial Action Task Force, terrorism financing has remained a threat that must be addressed by the relevant authorities.

This paper could be a useful source of information for the practitioners, academicians, policymakers and students studying this particular area of crime.

This paper contributes to a discourse on terrorism financing in the Malaysian context.

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 study is threefold: first, to detect trends in financial statement manipulation; second, to measure the level of manipulation and to measure the variation in manipulation between countries; and, third, to identify widely used techniques in financial statements manipulation.

This study uses financial data of listed companies from Asia, namely, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and China. The study adopts financial ratios, financial forensic tool, dichotomous approach and statistical tools to analyze the data (84,000 observations) over a period of four years from 2010 to 2013.

The results show that 34 per cent of sample companies in selected Asian countries are involved in the manipulation of financial statements; the average level of manipulation (overall manipulation index) is 72 per cent; and there is a significant difference between countries at 5 per cent level. The study also identifies four most commonly used techniques, namely: days’ sales in receivable (DSRI), depreciation (DEPI), assets quality (AQI) and total accruals to total assets (TATA).

Although this study found a significant national difference between countries in terms of practicing manipulation in financial statements, it did not address the issue of why some countries have higher level of manipulation and greater fluctuations in manipulation than others. Further study could be conducted to look for the reasons on these issues.

Investors and other stakeholders are advised to judge the manipulation in financial statements before fixing up for investment. At least they should examine Sales, Accounts Receivable, Depreciation, Value of Fixed Assets and Accruals data before accepting the financial statement in good faith.

The trend of manipulation in financial statements is increasing day by day and that is why it needs to prevent to protect our society from white collar crime. The cost of white collar crime is much higher and key executives are making money at the expense of investors and other stakeholders. This kind of study creates awareness among stakeholders about the manipulation as well as provides techniques to examine the faithfulness of financial statements. Then, managers will not overstate or understate either revenues or expenses easily, as it can damage the goodwill.

This is the first study of its kind addressing measurement of manipulation score, overall manipulation index (OMI) and identification of widely used variables of manipulation in financial statements are new contributions towards existing literature of earnings manipulation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between financial strength or condition and managerial practices in preparing financial statements of public limited companies. The objectives of this study are threefold – to measure the financial strength, to measure integrity index and to examine the relationship between management practices and financial strength.

Financial ratios, Altman’s Z-Score, integrity index, ranking approach and chi-square test are used to achieve the objectives. A multi-year cross-country analysis is done by considering sample of seven Asian countries, namely, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China and Japan.

The study catches the relationship between management practices and financial strength across sample countries. Management practices is one of the responsible factors for this relationship. They use discretionary power in preparing financial statements to control the trading results. The principles of accounting do not support the alteration of financial data to look the company better on paper. The cost of financial statement fraud is higher than other occupational fraud.

This study does not cover factors other than management practices and further study could be conducted to look for the other reasons that may also responsible for the deviations.

Conflict of interest between shareholders and board of directors is not a new phenomenon. Auditing system is introduced to minimize this conflict of interest, but they failed to uphold their position in reality. Management also needs to prove their integrity in financial statements. Ethical consideration is the highest priority.

Stakeholders, especially regulators, professional bodies and academics, should concentrate on the issue on ‘how to reduce the manipulation in financial statements’ to create a safe investments avenue for the nation.

This study provides empirical evidences regarding the influence of management practices on financial statements and financial strength of listed companies across countries. The culture, attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, etc., are different from country to country. The aim is to contribute empirical evidence about the relationship between management practices and financial health in different settings. This study is first of its kind.

This paper aims to conduct a comparison on the effectiveness of the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) of Australia and Malaysia in investigating money laundering cases by looking into the legal system and operational issues faced in conducting the investigation.

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze the data collected from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Mutual Evaluation Report, focusing on the information outlined in the third chapter. The legal system and operational issues cover the area of technical compliance and effectiveness compliance, which were introduced in the latest FATF Evaluation Methodology issued in 2013.

The results show that both countries have the power needed to investigate money laundering and terrorism financing under their respective Anti-Money Laundering Act. However, Australia is seen to have a better investigative support system to assist LEAs during the investigation process. This explains the reason for difficulties in increasing the number of prosecutions for money laundering and terrorism financing cases. Hence, improvement actions are needed in curbing this issue.

The result suggests that Malaysia should strengthen the cooperation, coordination and capacity among LEAs to ensure effective targeting, investigation and prosecution of money laundering. The government should also revise the money laundering investigation time frame and broaden the power of LEAs in retrieving information during the investigation process. Malaysia should also enhance the investigative support system, which will be helpful for LEAs in gathering sufficient evidence to support their money laundering charges. Unlimited power in gathering evidence is prominent to charge money launders as it helps to gather information required for prosecution.

Prior literature focuses on the prevention mechanism, where this paper aims to focus on detection and investigation mechanism focusing on money laundering investigation conducted by LEAs. Lack of study on money laundering investigation calls for this research to be done to understand the strengths and weaknesses to improve its effectiveness in the future.

This study aims to understand the member countries’ current asset recovery mechanism based on two elements, namely, confiscation policy and asset recovery management framework.

Content analysis was performed on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) of eight countries.

The result showed that only a few countries established a centralised asset recovery centre or special task force to manage recovered assets.

This study is limited to information mentioned in the FATF MER.

This study highlights the need to have a centralised asset recovery management centre as an initiative to improve the outcome of money laundering investigations. The study findings will benefit regulators to understand further the practical challenges of the asset recovery mechanism for future improvement.

FATF recommends that each country establish a centralised asset recovery centre and work closely with the investigating officers and prosecutors in deciding on assets confiscation. However, the implementation is contingent on their local environment and resources at the member countries’ discretion. Therefore, this study aimed to understand the member countries’ current asset recovery mechanism based on two elements, namely confiscation policy and asset recovery management framework.

Malaysia has implemented a comprehensive AML/CFT framework, yet its effectiveness remains questionable due to low number of prosecutions on money laundering cases. Therefore, this study aims to understand the reasons for low number of prosecutions, by addressing the challenges faced by the law enforcement agencies in conducting money laundering investigation. This study then identifies future improvement actions to enhance their effectiveness in combating money laundering in future.

This study distributed surveys to the law enforcement agencies that are responsible for conducting money laundering investigation in Malaysia. In total, 65 surveys were distributed; however, only 61 were returned to the researchers. Out of the 61 surveys returned, only 39 can be analysed due to incomplete answers given by respective respondents.

The results show that the investigating officers are facing difficulties in gathering sufficient information to support their charges. Besides information gathering, they are also facing difficulties due to short investigation timeframe regulated in the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act (AMLATFPUAA) 2001. This study concludes that, although the law enforcement agencies have the power to investigate money laundering and terrorism financing under the act, Malaysia is lacking in having a good investigative support system to assist the law enforcement agencies during the investigation process.

The results of this study are helpful to the regulators and law enforcement agencies in determining the flaws of the current money laundering investigation practices. This study also provides suggestions for future improvement action.

Lack of study focuses on money laundering investigation conducted by the law enforcement agencies, especially in the Malaysian setting, makes the study valuable to the money laundering research.

Corporate crimes in Malaysia are increasing each year. These issues are bothersome to the investors, creditors and the public as a whole because of the huge impact on all of them. Employees lose their jobs, investors do not get optimal return on their investments and creditors are unable to get their payments, and as a result, the public lose their faith on the legislation. The purpose of this study is to analyze the cases charged under Securities Commission and Bank Negara Malaysia.

This study analyzes the cases in Securities Commission and Bank Negara under four criteria which are the corporate profiles, details on crime committed, perpetrators profile and, finally, the offence.

The findings show that top-level management, especially the directors, usually commit such crime and many of them are male.

This study looks into the criteria of the cases charged under both institutions, Securities Commission and Bank Negara, which can be used to create awareness among the organizations in Malaysia.

This study aims to discuss the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Special Recommendation IX (SR IX) and the importance of complying with the recommendation, which focuses on cross-border declaration or disclosure with the objective to detect and prevent illicit cross-border transportation of cash and bearer negotiable instruments (BNIs). This study also looks into compliance ratings of Asia Pacific Group (APG) 40 countries on the FATF SR IX.

This study reviews the mutual evaluation reports issued by APG on money laundering from 2006 to 2012. Based on the mutual evaluation reports, this study also looks into recommendations and comments given by respective panels. The compliance ratings together with panel’s recommendations and comments compiled in this study will be helpful to relevant authorities for future improvement.

Complying to FATF SR IX helps relevant authorities in detecting and preventing illicit from cross-border transportation of cash and BNIs. Out of 40, only two countries received compliant rating, which shows the need of improvement to ensure that the country is compliant on FATF SR IX.

This study is limited to the panel’s reviews and recommendations on mutual evaluation report and only focuses on FATF SR IX.

This paper analyzes the compliance characteristics of countries based on their FATF mutual evaluation report. It highlights the comments and recommendation for future improvement to ensure that these countries will comply with FATF SR IX.