Europe is losing the fight against dirty money
Europe is losing the fight against dirty money because it has used national solutions to tackle an international problem
Monday, April 2, 2018
Rob Wainwright, who will be leaving his post as Europol director after almost a decade, said: “One of my favorite frustrations is on financial crime — the anti-money laundering regime.“ Professional money launderers — and we have identified 400 at the top, top level in Europe — are running billions of illegal drug and other criminal profits through the banking system with a 99 percent success rate,” he said. “We have created a whole ton of regulations … the banks are spending $20 billion a year to run the compliance regime … and we are seizing 1 percent of criminal assets every year in Europe.” According to the latest Europol figures, between 0.7 and 1.2 percent of EU annual GDP is “detected as being involved in suspect financial activity.” (See also: The EU’s latest agreement on amending the anti-money laundering directive: at the vanguard of trust transparency, but still further to go)
