Book

Description

Financial crime no longer respects borders, and neither can the response to it. A single wire transfer can cross a dozen jurisdictions in seconds, a shell company can be incorporated in an afternoon, and a virtual asset can move value across the globe without ever touching a bank. Against this backdrop, the international community has built an intricate architecture of conventions, resolutions, standards and national laws designed to detect and disrupt money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. For many practitioners entering this field — whether as a junior compliance officer at a commercial bank, a newly appointed analyst at a Financial Intelligence Unit, a law enforcement investigator, or a graduate student — the sheer volume of instruments, acronyms and institutions can be overwhelming. The Vienna Convention, the Palermo Convention, the Merida Convention, Security Council Resolutions 1267, 1373 and 1540, and the FATF 40 Recommendations, mutual evaluations, the grey list and the black list: each carries its own history, its own logic, and its own vocabulary. This book was written to close that gap. It does not attempt to replace the primary texts of the conventions or the FATF Recommendations themselves — practitioners should always consult the original instruments for authoritative wording. Instead, it offers a guided, plain-language 16 Simplifying International Financial Crime Law walk through the architecture, showing how each piece connects to the others and, most importantly, how the framework touches the daily work of a compliance officer, a regulator, or an investigator.