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This paper aims to compete and detect suspicious transactions that can lead to detecting money laundering cases.

This paper presents a plan-based framework for anti-money laundering systems (PBAMLS). Such a framework is novel and consists of two phases, in addition to several supporting modules. The first phase, the monitoring phase, utilizes an automata approach as a formalism to detect probable money laundering. The detection process is based on a money laundering deterministic finite automaton that has been obtained from the corresponding regular expressions which specify different money laundering processes. The second phase is STRIPS-based planning phase that aims at strengthening the belief in the probable problems discovered in the first (monitoring) phase. In addition, PBAMLS contains several supporting modules for data collection and mediation, link analysis and risk scoring. To assess the applicability of PBAMLS, it has been tested using different cases studies.

This framework provides a clear shift of anti-money laundering systems (AML) from depending heuristic and human expertise to making use of a rigorous formalism to accomplish concrete decisions. It minimizes the possibilities of false positive alarms and increases the certainty in decision-making.

This framework enhances the detection of money laundering cases. It also minimizes the number of false-positive alarms that waste the investigators’ efforts and time; it decreases the efforts presented by the investigators.

This work proposes PBAMLS as a novel plan-based framework for AML systems.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the impact of audit features, including audit quality, audit fees and auditor tenure on money laundering in Iranian stock companies.

This research is descriptive-correlational and applied in terms of purpose. To evaluate the audit features, variables including audit quality, audit fee and auditor tenure were used. The statistical population of this study includes all companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange and the research period from 2012 to 2018. A sample of 150 companies was selected by the screening method. In this study, logistic regression and Eviews 10 software were used for data analysis and hypothesis testing.

The results showed that variables including audit quality, normal audit fee and auditor tenure have a significant effect on money laundering.

Observing money laundering rules and regulations for businesses involves is a critical issue. In auditing the financial statements of the business units subject to these laws, the auditor reviews their actions to obtain reasonable assurance of guaranteeing the money laundering laws, evaluates their effectiveness and gains approval of managers regarding observing laundering regulations. In this regard, the auditor is required to report definitive or suspected money-laundering cases or its certain or suspected evidence to the relevant authorities. Although the law prohibits the auditor from disclosing such matters to the client, it is not necessary. It seems that even if the auditors perform non-audit functions, they should report money laundering or suspicious operations and transactions.

The paper aims to examine the jeopardy of the bank in performing its varied functions to customers, the public and regulatory authorities. The bank’s overriding mandate is accepting deposits from its customer and to make payments as and when requested. However, banks also perform investment undertakings and other related functions. Banks have been applauded for facilitating the fight against crimes such as money laundering and financing of terrorism but they are times when they have also been vilified for not doing enough to prevent the foregoing crimes. There is evidence that banks have sometimes been exploited to facilitate commission of crimes either wilfully or recklessly. In this regard, banks which do not do enough to prevent commission of crimes have been perceived as either delinquents or villains for allowing themselves to be exploited for those inclined at committing money laundering and its predicate offences. The paper explores the varied situations in which banks have been caught up in both of these foregoing situations. They have done a plausible job in safeguarding the public and prevention of money laundering and terrorism offences. They have also been perceived as villains by allowing themselves to be exploited by criminals in perpetuating the foregoing offences. In both of the foregoing extremes, public opinion has been divided – there are those who support that banks do a good job and those who brand banks as villains. Those empathising with banks argue that by requiring banks to report suspected money laundering activities creates unfriendly business environment and hostilities in a particular bank. Apparently, this school of thought posits that over-regulation of banks potentially generates a hostile business environment and scares off potential business clients not to mention generating an anti-business climate in a particular bank. To them, banks should do just banking without being encumbered to provide overarching oversight responsibilities such as fighting money laundering and terrorism. The work of preventing crimes should be responsibility of oversight institutions and authorities, and banks should not be involved in executing of the foregoing responsibilities. As such, banks have been reduced to act as policemen. However, one wonders whether the foregoing thesis suggests that banks should just sit back and be exploited for criminal purposes or accept to acquiesce wrong doing or lawlessness simply for business expediency? This paper explores the jeopardy of the bank in delivering its mandate and to evaluate where the balance between its competing obligations needs to be drawn. Banks perform duties to the customer (emanating from their contractual relationship) and its responsibility to the regulatory authorities to safeguard the public. The paper provides an exposition of the modern business regulatory landscape within which banks operate in performing their competing duties towards the customer and the public. In the modern elusive global market environment, banks are in a jeopardy because people they would least expect to be involved in money laundering could be chief instigators of money laundering (ML) and predicate crimes. This includes presidents (e.g. Sana Abacha of Nigeria), minsters, judges and other elevated government figures could be the ones instigating the commission of money laundering offences in their countries. The jeopardy of the bank is that some of the foregoing political officials could be untouchable political figures on whose its survival depends. Banks need to remain fully alert bearing in mind that with globalised business environment in which they operate, circumstances can change very rapidly. It would also be overly unnecessary to blame banks for failures in the regulatory system beyond their control such as the global crisis – which they could not have foreseen or prevented. Finally, this paper articulates the fluid environment in which the modern bank operates and its attendant challenges.

The paper was written by the analysis of both primary and secondary data sources focusing on vulnerability of banks in executing their mandate as financial institutions. The paper has also utilised case law on misfeasance of banks where courts have found banks for misfeasance and literally not doing enough in execution of their obligations to prevent financial crimes. This paper has also utilised some of the data utilised by the author in writing his PhD dissertation but done so in a distinctive manner to foster the objective of this paper. The author has harnessed and evaluated the foregoing data sources and adapted them in different contexts to address pertinent issues this paper was written on.

The findings are not clear cut of whether banks qualify to be branded villains or heroes. The findings have demonstrated that the majority of banks are doing a plausible job to prevent money laundering and prevention of terrorism. There are also discerning situations where banks have been less valiant in prevention of crimes and in doing so they have put themselves in a negative spotlight. The paper has utilised different data sources generated on the role of banks in providing frontline services to the public and their failure to execute the foregoing mandate diligently.

The limitation of the paper is that it would have been better to evaluate the secondary data sources used in writing it by carrying out interviews on some issues it hinges. Due to some practicalities, it was not possible to carry out interviews or to send out questionnaires to banks and other financial institutions. As such, some of the data sources used could have been biased.

This paper is of significant importance for banks, regulatory authorities, governments and those with a stake in the way banks are regulated and governed. I presume the foregoing stakeholder constituencies will find it a worth read and interesting. The paper also demonstrates that some the information written on banks in newspapers is not always true and urges caution in utilising newspapers as a source of generating data. It also underscores the need for banks to be more vigilant in execution of their mandate towards different stakeholder constituencies, so that they are not inadvertently exploited for criminal purposes.

The paper has far reaching implications for banks to be utilised in prevention of crimes in executing their mandate cautiously. It is important that much as financial institutions should be utilised in the foregoing respect, they should not be constrained by over-regulation, as this also means that they would pay dearly in compliance costs.

The originality of the paper is manifested that while it has relied heavily on secondary and primary data sources, it was written in a distinctive way to foster the objectives of writing it. The paper was also evaluated in the context of empirical evidence where banks have used the influence to prevent crimes or where they have been less vigilant in doing so and they have been exposed to criminal exploitation. The foregoing experiences were evaluated carefully using reliable data sources such as case law and recent legislation.

The Criminal Justice Act 1993 (CJA 1993) introduces a wide array of offences designed to combat the threat of money laundering. While not the first piece of legislation with such a purpose, the CJA 1993 is a major bulwark in the United Kingdom's anti‐laundering legislation, creating several offences for what might at first seem barely criminal behaviour. Furthermore, the Money Laundering Regulations of the same year place an onerous burden on financial institutions to put in place systems to combat laundering.

This study aims to understand how forensic accountants can analyse bank transactions suspected of being involved with money laundering crimes in Brazil through social network analysis (SNA).

The methodological approach taken in this study was exploratory. This study cleaned and debugged bank statements from criminal investigations in Brazil using computational algorithms. Then graphs were designed and matched with money laundering regulations.

The findings indicated that graph techniques contribute to a range of beneficial information to help identify typical banking transactions (pooling accounts, strawmen, smurfing) used to conceal or disguise the movement of illicit resources, enhancing visual aspects of financial analysis.

Research found limitations in the data sets with reduced identification of originators and beneficiaries, considered low compared to other investigations in Brazil. Furthermore, to preserve restrict information and keep data confidential, data sets used in research were not made available.

Law enforcement agencies and financial intelligence units can apply graph-based technique cited in this research to strengthen anti-money laundering activities. The results, grounded in analytical approaches, may offer a source of data to regulators and academia for future research.

This study created data sets using real-life bank statements from two investigations of competence by the Brazilian Federal Justice, including real-data perspectives in academic research. This study uses SNA, which is a popular approach in several areas of knowledge.

Directive 91/308/EEC has been hailed by many European Union commentators as an extraordinary advance in the cause of EU integration, not least because it is still one of the few Directives actually in force in the field of EU criminal law. From the point of view of money laundering control, the Directive has been the EU's main weapon in its endeavours to ensure that the liberalisation of the financial markets and the consequent freedom of capital movements ‘is not used for undesirable purposes, such as money laundering’. Notwithstanding the undoubtful success of the Directive to introduce a minimum level of money laundering control mechanisms in all 15 EU member states (some of which had not even criminalised money laundering before transposing the Directive), however, Directive 91/308/EEC is no longer considered an adequately progressive legislative text for the advancement of further money laundering prevention to a pace equal to the one currently in force both at the international level and within some of the EU member states. The legislative response of the EU to the need for increasingly progressive legislation has been the Draft Money Laundering Directive, which having been passed by the Council and the Parliament is in the final stages of becoming part of EU legislation.

Money laundering and terrorism financing use the banking sector system illegally and result in enormous losses for the state and nation. Regulatory Technology (RegTech) is an important part of effectively preventing money laundering and terrorism financing. However, the implementation of RegTech related to the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, especially in the Indonesian banking sector, has not been widely studied and discussed. Therefore, this study aims to provide empirical testing evidence regarding the effectiveness of RegTech implementation in the Indonesian banking sector to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.

This study uses primary data obtained through a survey distributed to 160 bankers who work in eight different banks in Indonesia with a 95% confidence level and a confidence interval of 7.75. The criteria needed to determine the sample in this study are individuals who actively work as staff whose work is directly related to banking; individuals who are actively working in banks registered with OJK; individuals who have been actively working in the banking sector in Indonesia for at least three years. The data that has been obtained were analyzed using the SmartPLS application to test the validity and reliability, descriptive statistics and structural models (inner model).

The results of this study indicate that electronic know your customer (eKYC), transaction monitoring (TM), cost and time efficiencies (CTE) influence the prevention of anti-money laundering (AML) and countering financing of terrorism (CFT) in the Indonesian banking sector. However, eKYC and CTE have little influence on AML-CFT in the Indonesian banking sector. Meanwhile, TM has a moderate influence on AML-CFT in the Indonesian banking sector. In addition, in general, most bankers agree that the bank they work for has followed the guidelines, policies and regulations that have been given.

This study uses the Indonesian banking sector as a research subject that raises the effectiveness of the implementation of the use of RegTech to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing.

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a transnational organized crime that generates billions in criminal proceeds each year. Yet, it is not regarded by many countries as a serious crime. There is also no general consensus on its recognition as a predicate offence for money laundering. In this regard, banks are misused in different ways to facilitate financial flows linked to IWT. This paper aims to illustrate the importance of the banking sector in combating money laundering relating to IWT. It also aims to demonstrate the need for a general recognition of IWT as a predicate offence for money laundering.

This study investigates the implementation of money laundering controls by banks in the illegal-wildlife-trade context. As background to this investigation, it provides an overview of IWT, which is followed by an exploration of some of the general characteristics of the banking sector, before discussing the relevant Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations.

This study finds that the banking sector is well-placed to combat money laundering relating to the IWT and is, by virtue of its international nature and strong focus on compliance, able to be effective in preventing the use of the proceeds of IWT as well as in identifying broader trafficking networks. Moreover, the banking sector is well-equipped to develop appropriate platforms to facilitate the swift, easy and effective sharing of financial intelligence between banks at the local, regional and especially international level.

This study draws on publicly available information on financial flows relating to IWT. Little data and research are available on the financial flows and consequently the money laundering techniques used in cases suspected of IWT.

There has been little scholarly research on the relationship between money laundering and the IWT as well as the financial flows of IWT in general. This study highlights some of the money laundering techniques used in relation to IWT by drawing on the works of various international organizations, including the FATF.

This study aims to identify the sources of laundered money in Iran and the destinations to which it is transferred, independently verified by auditors. Based on such data, the study aims to develop a simple model of endogenous and exogenous factors facilitating money laundering in developing countries, which can inform domestic and international legislative and regulatory responses.

Questionnaires were sent to Iranian certified public accountants who worked for auditing firms in 2019 and who have encountered suspected money laundering during their work with clients.

The government and public officials are the primary sources of money laundering activity in Iran. The main destinations of laundered funds are investments abroad, gold, foreign currencies, real estate and purchases of luxury goods. Domestic legislation, while bearing similarities with that found in other jurisdictions such as the UK and the USA, is flawed in several ways, including an inability to determine beneficial ownership of funds and weak enforcement.

Because of international sanctions and the prevailing political situation, it is difficult to obtain data for money laundering and other financial crimes in Iran. The data obtained is of importance to international bodies in understanding the nature of money laundering in Iran, and how to negotiate in the future to address mutual concerns. Given the country’s perceived high association with money laundering, the data obtained is of value in identifying the specific characteristics of the problem.

Money laundering, the process by which the proceeds derived from criminal activity are disguised or concealed, is a problem of international dimensions. US law enforcement officials estimate that between $100bn and $300bn in US currency is laundered each year. Some observers estimate the global range to be between $200bn and $500bn each year, making money laundering the world's third largest business behind foreign exchange and the oil industry. The International Monetary Fund provides an even higher estimate, determining in 1999 that the aggregate size of global money laundering could be between 2 and 5 per cent of the world's gross domestic product, translating into $590bn to $1.5trn annually.