The Panama Papers provided proof to the world of something that had long been suspected: the secrecy havens – jurisdictions in which global financial flows were hidden in ways that not even those entrusted with enforcing the laws and regulations of countries around the world could detect – were being used by those engaged in a host of nefarious activities, from tax evasion to corruption and even to child pornography.

This book contains essays presented at the seminar written by practitioners and academics with extensive experience in the field of CTF. The authors offer a diversity of views on the domestic, regional and international initiatives aimed at detecting terrorist funds in the financial system, preventing terrorists from moving their money via alternative financial channels and facilitating the recovery of terrorist assets.

At the opening session of the recent High Level Conference on Illicit Financial Flows: Interagency Cooperation and Good Tax Governance in Africa (Pretoria, South Africa, 14 to 15 July 2016), the South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan highlighted that Africa continues to lose large sums of money annually as a result of illicit financial flows estimated at USD 50 billion every year; the application of complex ownership structures has become the most commonly used means of hiding ownership of assets.

Experts from Basel Institute participated during a roundtable organised in Sofia, Bulgaria on 14 July 2016 by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD), a Bulgarian interdisciplinary public policy institute, on the topic: “Scope and implications of money laundering activities: institutional governance in the fight against money laundering in Bulgaria”. Basel Institute is a partner organisation with CSD under the Bulgarian Thematic Fund Security Project “Overcoming institutional capacity gaps to counter corruption and organised crime in Bulgaria”.

Singapore demonstrates a strong anti-money laundering (AML) legislative framework but shows significant weaknesses in its effective implementation, according to a recent review by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The Basel Institute on Governance provides a comparative analysis illustrating how Singapore fares/compares against other countries evaluated by the FATF on the basis of its new assessment methodology.