NCJ Number
201282
Journal
Journal of Financial Crime Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Dated: October 2002 Pages: 130-132
Date Published
October 2002
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This paper, authored by the director general of the Jersey Financial Services Commission (located on Jersey, a British Crown Dependency), discusses the effect of globalization of financial markets, with attention to the impact of various international initiatives designed to facilitate the detection of money laundering in offshore financial centers.
Abstract
One impact of the globalization of financial markets is to make the concept of an "offshore center" meaningless, since the globalization of financial markets means that all financial centers are "offshore;" globalization means that money is free to flow wherever it receives the best return on investment. In the face of the internationalization of financial centers, international initiatives are designed to set and impose common standards of bank supervision; securities and insurance regulation; anti-money laundering defenses; and other controls. The author argues that it is the responsibility of each financial center to meet these standards, and he maintains that Jersey has met these standards for financial regulation. He then focuses in this paper on a particular issue that arises from the globalization of financial markets, i.e., the use of the financial system by public figures to launder money they have taken in bribes or stolen from their national treasuries. Many of these people have put money in a series of "offshore" centers such as London, Switzerland, and New York before standards were as rigorous as they are now. The response should be to erect defenses by insisting that financial institutions know their customers and report anything suspicious to the police, as well as to have effective powers for dealing with those who breach those defenses. The author notes that Jersey has these defenses and these powers. This paper offers suggestions for how financial centers might be aided in dealing with deposited monies from suspected or known corrupt leaders. Perhaps it would make sense for all those jurisdictions whose institutions hold money from a corrupt leader to form a club to assist each other. That assistance could establish patterns of behavior to speed up the investigation. In addition, the club could consider whether or not to hand the assets over to an international escrow fund proposed in this paper. 3 references