Why Aren't Those Charged with Money Laundering Charged Like Mu

So the ecu Commission really wants to give the European Banking Authority powers to make sure money laundering is investigated more consistently.

This could mean the EBA having the ability to ask national anti-money laundering supervisors to investigate suspected laundering and take specific action. There's also plans for national anti-money laundering supervisory authorities, improved information sharing that has been enhanced cooperation with non-EU countries on cross-border cases.

Could this bring results? Possibly. But it ignores the large money laundering elephant that is set slap bang within the EU's room. The elephant that will tell anybody who will listen when each and every bank and enforcement agency was genuinely worried about money laundering we wouldn't possess the requirement for constant EU handwringing and proposals. However they appear to not be. Therefore we have an endless procession of procedures and hard talk. And all the as the types of unchecked money laundering on a vast scale continue to come to light.

September saw Thomas Borgen resign as CEO of Danske Bank, as the bank finally admitted that many of the EUR200 billion that had passed through its Estonian branch between 2007 and 2021 was laundered money being moved illegally out of Russia, the united kingdom and also the British Virgin Islands. Weeks earlier, the Dutch bank ING paid EUR775M to stay an investigation it had failed to detect money laundering. Last year saw Germany's Deutsche Bank fined almost $700M in order to wealthy Russians move $10 billion overseas and up to date months happen to be interspersed with high-profile money laundering cases at banks in Malta, Latvia and Spain.

In every other situation where criminal activity was considered to be being conducted repeatedly on a large scale, the authorities would swoop. Plus they wouldn't simply make some enquiries after which hand out a sizable fine to an organisation. They'd follow the chain of evidence, identify the individual or individuals responsible and prosecute them.

As a hypothetical example, if your group of 3 people who helped the same bank might be proven to have murdered numerous people, they would be arrested, charged, prosecuted and would be convicted and likely to spend a large number of years imprisonment. There wouldn't be a lengthy enquiry that saw the bank they worked for given a hefty financial penalty as the three criminals were left liberated to keep committing the crimes. So why would be that the case with money laundering?

Regardless of whether the new EU proposals are introduced, the question needs to be asked: are the authorities genuinely bothered about bringing to book the people who facilitate money laundering? There is little doubt that the powers that be want to strip people of the items they believe to be the proceeds of crime. Within our experience they frequently seem misguided or overzealous by doing this. But exactly how lots of people employed in the financial services industries have been prosecuted for laundering money for those who have earned it through crime? Are there any?

Tough talk about laundering might have some merit. In the end, close cooperation between authorities must surely lead to more effective detection of laundering. Yet detection hardly seems to be the solution. We know that while one major money laundering operation has been uncovered the likelihood is that lots of, many more are functioning safe in the knowledge that they may never be detected. And people involved in the banking side of such operations can, it seems, still launder with impunity. Everything we all know about laundering suggests the fact that as the banks they work for may receive a costly slap around the wrists they themselves will escape prosecution.

So my argument is not that more measures to recognize money laundering are unwelcome or unnecessary. It is that they are going to be hugely ineffective like a deterrent if those who physically perform the laundering are never prosecuted.

In the united kingdom, there has been increased efforts through the authorities to take the assets of those who are viewed to possess obtained them from crime. Unexplained wealth orders are just the most recent attempt to put a person with suspect causes of wealth “on the spot''. And that's an understandable strategy. But anyone with expensive houses, cars and a wide array of other costly assets bought with tainted money only has been able to do so because someone inside a bank has helped launder that money. So would it not be more effective to choose them?

Efforts are continually being designed to respond to certain countries being awash with laundered money. But the priority appears to be by taking your wealth from those who possess it while fining banks involved. Wouldn't it make more sense to visit following the individuals within the banks who've enabled laundered cash to flood into countries? Maybe then the tap could be switched off and also the flood of laundered money would be a trickle.