Panelists stress role of international community in tackling money laundering Workshop on financial abuse held at IMF
| Author | IMF Legal Department |
| Pages | 85-89 |
Page 85
Fighting money laundering makes it more difficult for criminals to retain the proceeds of their crimes.
On February 19, panelists participating in a joint IMF-World Bank workshop on financial abuse stressed this point and gave special attention to multinational efforts to combat money laundering.
The workshop was divided into three panels. The first, introduced and moderated by IMF General Counsel François Gianviti, included Rick McDonell of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering; Judge Jean- François Thony of the Court of Appeals of Versailles, France; and Jack Blum of the Washington,DC, law firm of Lobel,Novins & Lamont. The panel members drew particular attention to underlying crimes that had potentially adverse economic effects on countries, such as corruption by public officials.
This form of financial abuse, they noted, can seriously retard economic development by raising costs to business, inhibiting foreign investment, and reducing government resources. The panelists also discussed organized crime, whose effects are similar to those of public corruption. Both activities can be severely destabilizing politically, they observed, and both activities often have their proceeds laundered offshore, including through major financial centers like New York and London.
Page 88
Policies designed to combat money laundering, according to the panelists, may also prevent and uncover other financial sector crimes. In particular, they said, financial intelligence units originally designed to uncover money laundering by examining data from banks and other financial institutions can also play an important role in detecting such crimes as check, credit card, and advance fee fraud. The panel members noted that financial intelligence units from different jurisdictions can also expose patterns of crime across borders by sharing information among themselves.
The second panel, also introduced and moderated by Gianviti, consisted of José María Roldán Alegre, President of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Timothy Lemay of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP). They discussed the FATF's efforts to identify "noncooperative countries or territories" whose efforts to control money laundering have...
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