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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”.

The purpose of this paper is to utilise underused information in anti-money laundering rating data to assist policymaking and research.

This paper explores what evidence “hidden in plain sight” in official anti-money laundering rating data reveals about claims justifying the expansion of money laundering controls in response to European bank scandals.

A perceived lack of international coordination influencing the policy response to a series of alleged anti-money laundering breaches does not accord with the anti-money laundering industry’s own evidence base.

Responding to new crises with superficial solutions without addressing fundamental questions with a multi-disciplinary perspective risks repeating and extending a decade-long cycle of ineffectiveness in efforts to mitigate the social and economic harms from profit-motivated crime.

This paper draws fresh conclusions from the anti-money laundering industry’s “main” data set, underused in policymaking and research.

This article aims to constructively critique the new global methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of anti-money laundering regimes against defined outcomes.

With surprisingly little discussion at the intersection of the money laundering and policy effectiveness and outcomes scholarship and practice, this article combines elements of these disciplines and recent peer-review evaluations, to qualitatively assess the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) anti-money laundering “effectiveness” methodology.

FATF’s “effectiveness” methodology does not yet reflect an outcome-oriented framework as it purports. Misapplication of outcome labels to outputs and activities miss an opportunity to evaluate outcomes, as the impact and effect of anti-money laundering policies.

If the “outcomes” of the “effectiveness” framework do not match the crime and terrorism prevention policy goals of nation states, the new “main” component for assessing the effectiveness of anti-money laundering regimes potentially detracts focus and resources from, rather than towards, intended policy objectives.

There is a dearth of scholarship whether the global anti-money laundering “effectiveness” framework is sufficiently robust to assess effectiveness as it purports. This article begins addressing that gap.

Many examinations of police misconduct involve case study methodologies applied to a single agency, or a handful of agencies. Consequently, there is little evidence regarding the types of misconduct across agencies, or the impact of department-level characteristics on the nature and prevalence of officer deviance. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap using statewide data of over 1,500 charges of police misconduct filed with the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (AZPOST) from 2000 to 2011.

This study examines variation in the prevalence and forms of misconduct across 100+ agencies based on agency type and size. Difference scores were calculated for every agency in the state to determine whether an agency’s level of misconduct was proportionate to the number of officers employed by that agency. AZPOST data were supplemented with Law Enforcement Management and Statistics data to identify organizational correlates of misconduct in agencies generating disproportionately low and high levels of misconduct.

Results identify variation in officer misconduct across different types of agencies. Tribal agencies generally experience higher rates of domestic violence and drug/alcohol-related incidents. Smaller agencies have more misconduct allegations involving supervisors. Organizational characteristics including pre-hiring screening, accountability mechanisms and community relationships are associated with lower levels of agency misconduct.

The use of AZPOST data enables a statewide examination of misconduct while accounting for organizational context. This study identifies organizational features that might serve to protect agencies against disproportionate rates of officer misbehavior.

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 present an empirical study of white‐collar crime in business organisations, to create insights into perceptions of potential offenders.

A survey instrument was developed and submitted electronically to the chief financial officers of the 500 largest business organisations in Norway.

The study identified financial misconduct by chief executive officers in the company as the crime associated with the most serious consequence for the company. However, a person in a purchasing and procurement function is assumed to be the most likely involved in and vulnerable to white‐collar crime.

This is a survey approach that does not reflect actual crime.

Both control mechanisms and ethics are needed to prevent and detect white‐collar crime.

No executive should be left alone to handle business matters that can benefit himself/herself. Rather, the four eyes principle should always be applied.

The paper provides statistical evidence that top‐level executives are involved in financial crime.

The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic approach to classify financial crime into main categories as well as sub categories.

Based on a literature review, the main four categories were labeled corruption, fraud, theft, and manipulation, respectively.

There is a massive variety of crime types and crime names in the literature that can successfully be allocated to main categories of financial crime.

The paper is based on exploratory research to stimulate future research in refining and improving the categories suggested here.

The great variety of criminal activities is classified in this paper so that practitioners can organize their thinking around crime themes rather than crime examples when mapping crime.

The public and society at large will be able to understand the confusing variety of financial crime in terms of main categories.

There has been some confusion among both researchers and practitioners when communicating about examples of financial crime. The organizing framework in this paper will help allocate crime examples to main categories of financial crime.

Over the last two decades in particular, national legislatures have passed legislation aimed at ensuring that criminals do not profit from crime. This has been in response to the rise of organised crime and to the massive amounts of money being generated, in particular, by drug trafficking. It has been an attempt to destroy ‘the heart of the monster, its financial base’. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the proceeds of crime response by national governments can be perceived as evolving through a series of different models, thus allowing a comparative approach amongst different jurisdictions. Each model is composed of elements from three different strands: money‐laundering legislation, confiscation legislation and organisational structures and arrangements. These strands have each gone through their own evolution, which will now be examined.

Messner and Rosenfeld have proposed an institutional anomie theory of crime, incorporating the proposition that societal investments in programs to buffer citizens from capricious market forces (decommodification) are inversely related to rates of lethal violence among societies. They support this argument through an analysis of variations in homicide rates among nations. However, the research relevant to their theory is quite limited with numerous claims and arguments yet to be examined. This paper outlines several limitations of the theory and brings data from the World Values Surveys and other sources to bear on their characterization of American culture in comparison to other nations, their arguments about the impact of economic dominance on other institutions, and alternative explanations of the link between decommodification and homicide. Finally, the relevance of the theory to serious property crime is considered and shown to generate serious problems for institutional anomie theory when evaluated as a general theory of crime.

Banditry and terrorism constitute serious security risks in Nigeria. This follows the fact that Nigeria is rated as one of the leading states in the world that is plagued by terrorism. Terrorists and bandits usually embark on predicate crimes such as kidnapping, smuggling, narcotics trade, and similar trades to finance their terrorist enterprises in Nigeria. The funds realized by criminals from nefarious sources such as sales of narcotics and ransom from kidnapping are usually laundered to make their criminal enterprises self-sustaining. Thus, all “dirty” money is laundered so as not to attract the attention of law enforcement agents. The funds realized through receipt of ransom from kidnapping, smuggling or funds from sponsors are laundered through channels such as bureau de change, which are difficult to monitor by the Nigerian authorities due, in part, to flaws and loopholes in the current anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist laws. This paper aims to adopt a doctrinal and qualitative desktop research methodology. In this regard, the current anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist laws are discussed to explore possible measures that could be adopted to remedy the flaws and loopholes in such laws and combat money laundering and financing of terrorism in Nigeria.

The article analyses the regulation and combating of money laundering and terrorist financing activities in Nigeria. In this regard, a doctrinal and qualitative research method is used to explore the flaws in the Nigerian anti-money laundering laws so as to recommend possible remedies in respect thereof.

It is hoped that policymakers and other relevant persons will use the recommendations provided in this article to enhance the curbing of money laundering and terrorist financing activities in Nigeria.

The article is not based on empirical research.

This study is important and vital to all policymakers, lawyers, law students and regulatory bodies in Nigeria and other countries globally.

The study seeks to curb money laundering and terrorist financing activities in Nigeria.

The study is based on original research which is focused on the regulation and combating of money laundering and terrorist financing activities in Nigeria.