Regulators worldwide are putting the squeeze on banks that launder money for kleptocrats, mobsters and terrorists, pressuring the financial industry to clean up its act or face prosecution.
Experts told an International Financial Crimes conference in New York that a wave of new rules requiring banks to monitor their clients and report suspicious money movements was part of a growing recognition that all too often financial institutions turn a blind eye to corruption, which undermines human rights, harms countries and threatens national security.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Kevin Ford, formerly responsible for anti-money laundering at Goldman Sachs and now managing director at Regulatory Data Corp., an advisory firm on global risk and compliance issues based in Pennsylvania, said of what he sees as the accelerating crackdown on banks.
“There is going to be a storm of enforcement coming, and it couldn’t come at a worse time. As an industry, we have lost all our moral authority since the financial crisis.”
Internationally, a range of anti-bribery, tax evasion, asset forfeiture, anti-money laundering and sanctions laws are being used to capture criminals and rogue government officials. Banks are central to the crackdown since they are the conduits for the trillions of dollars in illicit financial flows each year.
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