In an article published in the Fall issue of the Bulletin of The International Academy of Financial Crime Litigators, Kateryna Boguslavska provides a snapshot of recent money laundering risks and trends as revealed by the Basel AML Index 2023.
Our recently released Basel AML Index 2023 says that countries need to supercharge their efforts to understand the evolving financial crime risks of new technologies – especially cryptocurrencies and other virtual assets.
This is the 12th Public Edition of the Basel AML Index.
The Basel AML Index is an independent annual ranking that assesses the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) around the world.
Published by the Basel Institute on Governance since 2012, it provides risk scores based on data from 18 publicly available sources such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Transparency International, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. The risk scores cover five domains:
Global money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks just keep on rising, according to the 2023 Public Edition of the Basel AML Index.
And that has real impact on people’s lives today – from well-funded terrorist attacks to trillions of dollars flowing out of countries through corruption and organised crime.
The Basel AML Index Expert Edition Plus subscription (free for practically all users outside the private sector) has introduced a new feature: an approach for predicting which jurisdictions are at risk of being placed on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) “grey list” of "jurisdictions under increased monitoring".
Today's biggest money laundering risks – and why they matter
Join the launch of the 2023 Public Edition of the Basel AML Index to explore some of the biggest and trickiest topics facing anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) professionals.
On the agenda:
A hybrid international conference attended by 1,300 participants has concluded that tackling the criminal use of cryptocurrencies is a race against time. Law enforcement agencies that collaborate in joint task teams and proactively collaborate with the private sector are getting ahead of the criminals. In contrast, countries that do not take the risks seriously are in danger of becoming a haven for crypto-enabled scams, money laundering and terrorist financing.
The Basel AML Index – the Basel Institute’s global money laundering index and risk assessment tool – will see a small but important methodology update this year. The aim is to better reflect the progress of jurisdictions that have graduated from the so-called grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global standard setter for anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT).
A blog by Zisheng Xing, a law student at the Arizona State University who is undertaking a legal research internship at the Basel Institute on Governance.
A monumental anti-money laundering fine recently dropped in Australia, sending shockwaves throughout the gambling industry – a sector well-known for flying under the radar of anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the wide-reaching sanctions which ensued, many Western financial institutions began to de-risk Russian clients. Dealing with Russian clients, in many cases, has become expensive from a compliance point of view and toxic from the reputational side.
However, the de-risking of unsanctioned Russian individuals may have a significant impact on the fight against financial crime by potentially causing: