The Basel Institute's latest Working Paper explores whether, why and how gold refiners can be further integrated in efforts to prevent and combat money laundering in Switzerland. The author, Stefan Mbiyavanga, explains the background and what motivated him to write it, including pending reforms in the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act.
This paper discusses anti- money laundering regulation for virtual currency intermediaries, by showcasing and comparing regulatory models at the national and international levels.
Basel Institute senior advisor and former board member Hans-Peter Bauer presented at the Baltic AML Forum on 2 October on the topic of Country Risk Assessment - A Difficult Task.
The Forum was opened by the Lithuanian Minister of Finance and attended by 150 participants, who were mainly compliance officers and tech experts from Baltic-region banks, FinTech companies and cryptocurrency ventures.
Money laundering risks in Malta have been in the headlines recently.
The Basel Institute's cryptocurrency expert, Federico Paesano, delivered a successful open training course on blockchain, cryptocurrencies and AML/CFT this week in collaboration with Zurich-based MME and its Senior Compliance Advisor, Chris Gschwend.
The two-day course, FinTech AML Compliance Training, covered the essentials of blockchain and how to adapt AML/CFT processes to the FinTech industry.
News
Tools to support enhanced due diligence in response to new EU list of high-risk third countries
The European Commission has released a new list of 23 “high-risk third countries” with weak anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) frameworks.
This means that banks and other entities subject to the EU’s AML rules will have to apply increased due diligence in relation to customers and financial institutions from these countries.
Publication
Basel Art Trade Anti-Money Laundering Principles
These Principles draw on the Basel Art Trade Guidelines originally issued in draft in 2012 and reissued in 2018 without any material changes. This paper seeks to complement and set out in more detail the anti-money laundering aspects of the 2012/2018 Guidelines.
Publication
Tracing Illegal Assets - A Practitioner's Guide
A fundamental priority for law enforcement authorities dealing with financial crime is to recover illegally obtained assets and deny criminals access to the proceeds of their crime. The recovery of illegally obtained assets, however, requires first to successfully trace them.
It has been estimated that roughly 1.6 trillion USD in criminal proceeds are laundered through the international financial system each year. To put this in perspective, this sum is more than the combined GDPs of Switzerland, Portugal, Romania, Belarus, and Austria in 2011.
Publication
Working Paper 14: Using money laundering investigations to fight corruption in developing countries
Anti-money laundering systems have the potential to curb the use of proceeds of corruption and other crimes by the perpetrators. An effectively implemented anti-money laundering framework limits the channels through which illicit funds can be laundered, making crime riskier and reducing the incentives for corrupt activities.