evasion should be a predicate offence to prosecute for money laundering; the limits of
bank secrecy, the use of bribery to penetrate the walls of secrecy and the leakage of
confidential bank information are among other issues that have surfaced.
Whilst there has been exponential growth in the literature on anti-money laundering
and terrorist financing and on corporate governance, a relatively unexplored area is the
role of good governance in promoting or facilitating compliance with anti-money
laundering regimes and vice versa. This paper focuses on the relationship between
anti-money laundering efforts and good governance. To illustrate certain aspects, it
reviews the literature on stock market operations (Jayasuriya, 2003) and seeks to
identify whether, through a good-governance approach, anti-money laundering efforts
can be further supported and reinforced. More importantly, it also addresses whether
anti-money laundering efforts themselves promote, wittingly or unwittingly, good
governance in the public and private sector institutions. In so-doing, the study aims to
help identify the potential for qualitative research to investigate the cogent issues most
relevant in the current climate.
An increasing number of studies on money laundering now address the economic
dimensions of money laundering; see, for instance, Bowles (2005) and Thomas (2001).
In particular, attention is being accorded to how recent anti-money laundering
regulations in the UK affect the institution of trust and the implications for trustees,
beneficiaries and management companies. Commenting on the Money Laundering
Regulations 2007 (SI 2007/2157) which came into operation on 15 December 2007,
Furness (2007) has observed that “every time an estate agent sells a house on behalf of
a trustee he will need to determine who the beneficial owner is and who controls the
trust”.
Attention is also being accorded to how structures that appear to have been devised to
avoid taxes can be made compliant by the use of various techniques to avoid money
laundering reporting obligations by finance professionals. These techniques have been
graphically described as “First aid; amputation; repatriation; remodelling; re-engineering
and relevant exemptions” by Summers and Bradshaw (2007).
In the context of current interests in addressing cutting-edge issues on the
inter-relationship between economics, business, regulation and governance, it is
perhaps useful to revisit the subject of anti-money laundering from a relatively new
perspective. Hopefully, some of the issues raised in this paper could be the subject of
further research adopting an inter-disciplinary approach.