In recent decades, the international community has made a concerted effort to develop the international Anti-Money Laundering Standards (AMLSs) and enhance their implementation at a national level. It is submitted that the AMLSs serve various laudable aims and States should adequately implement those standards. In fact, most States, including Vietnam, have been striving for the highest level of compliance with the AMLSs. This thesis suggests that external pressure and State socialization has compelled developing States to implement and comply with the international AMLSs, and Vietnam is an obvious case study. This thesis examines concisely the development and underlying rationales of a number of key categories of international AMLSs, and the difference in national implementation of each category. The implementation of such multifaceted standards in a transitional State, like Vietnam, requires substantial legal and administrative reform, which often faces numerous domestic hurdles. The examination of Vietnamese AML legislation has revealed that while significant deficiencies remain, certain categories of AMLSs have been transformed wholesale into Vietnamese law. As a part of the objectives of this study, suggestions for law reform have been made to close the gaps between the AML laws of Vietnam and the international standards. It is likely that Vietnam, within a short time, will revise the laws in order to obtain a better degree of compliance. However, given the political, economic and legal factors of Vietnam, this thesis argues that the enforcement of the laws in practice will be still limited. In other words, in the near future Vietnam can achieve what appears to be a high level of compliance with the international AMLSs, but only on paper.

Zugl.: Saarbrücken, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2007

Thesis (M.S. in Defense Analysis)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2010. / Thesis Advisor: Lee, Doowan. ; Second Reader: Berger, Marcos. "June 2010." Description based on title screen as viewed on July 16, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Terrorist networks, organized crime, illicit activities, money laundering, financial crimes, nation-state, exploit, infrastructures. Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-50). Also available in print.

Doctor Legum - LLD / The international legal framework on money laundering encourages states to put in place effective systems for the identification, freezing, seizure and forfeiture of proceeds and instrumentalities of crime. While the international legal framework obligates countries to adopt conviction-based forfeiture (criminal forfeiture), it only encourages them to consider adopting non-conviction based asset forfeiture (civil forfeiture). This has led to a situation where countries, such as Malawi, adopt only criminal forfeiture and not civil forfeiture. This study analyses the efficiency of the existing Malawian criminal forfeiture regime in curbing and preventing the proliferation of underlying profit-generating crimes and money laundering. This thesis contends, in part, that some countries have not adopted civil forfeiture because there is no international obligation to do so. It argues that the fact that states are not obligated to adopt civil forfeiture by international legal frameworks and national arrangements undermines the deterrent aim of the anti-money laundering and asset forfeiture systems in combating economic crimes. Some justify the casual approach to civil forfeiture by arguing that its implementation harbours the danger of violating human rights and constitutional guarantees. This thesis, however, advocates for the adoption of civil forfeiture within the limits of John Locke’s social contract theory, which guides states on how they can pursue policies and implement laws without limiting the rights of their people arbitrarily.

The Canadian proceeds of crime provisions, Part XTJ.2 of the Criminal Code, are targeted at enterprises that are motivated by the desire to generate profit and accumulate wealth from criminal activity. The main purpose of Part XII.2 is to provide the police and prosecution with powerful new tools to attach the proceeds of crime, and the courts with the power to forfeit such proceeds. This thesis will examine how, in recognition of the procedural and substantive problems with this legislation and in contrast to American legislation, Parliament included numerous provisions to balance such extensive powers. The balancing mechanisms included a provision that allows reasonable legal fees to be paid out of seized or restrained property that is alleged to be proceeds and another that requires an in camera session to be held without the presence of the Attorney General, to determine the reasonableness of such fees. The Parliamentary record explicitly demonstrates that the balancing provisions were meant to ensure that the pre-trial restraint and potential forfeiture of property would withstand Charter challenges, especially with regard to an accused's rights to counsel, fair trial and full answer and defence. In this thesis I will analyze the complexities of proceeds litigation and demonstrate how this necessitates adequate legal representation to ensure that an accused's Charter rights are protected. This thesis explores in depth how Parliament recognized the need for balancing mechanisms that permit funds to be released for an accused to retain private counsel. However, these mechanisms have been significantly narrowed by subsequent judicial interpretation. A result of this line of authority is that defence work in the proceeds area has become very difficult. If reasonable legal fees are not taken from seized proceeds, provincial legal aid plans will have to provide for appropriate counsel. This may not be a realistic option given the funding of these plans and their stated objection to funding proceeds cases. Therefore, in this thesis I will argue that if private counsel must be retained the right to counsel could be effectively forfeited, unless a portion of the seized or restrained assets are released for reasonable legal fees. This thesis will attempt to provide a coherent basis for future interpretation of the Part XII.2 provisions that affect legal fees. The approach taken will incorporate the competing interests of accused persons and the State without undermining the objectives of the legislation. This thesis will focus on Canadian legislation and jurisprudence, but will also have a comparative component that examines how these issues have been dealt with in Australia, England and the United States. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

The purpose of this mini-dissertation is to analyse and establish the potential money laundering and terrorism financing risks and implications of virtual currencies on the prevalent South African regulatory and supervisory architecture. The South African financial system is exceedingly regulated and supervised to ensure that it is prudent and reputable, and to enhance the safety and soundness thereof. Recently, technological innovations and developments have created immense issues especially from a financial regulatory and supervisory perspective. Financial technology has produced mysterious phenomena such as blockchain, insuretech, crowdfunding and virtual currencies. Presently, virtual currencies, which will be the focus of this study, do not fall within the ambits of the South African financial regulatory or supervisory regime and have thus created a regulatory arbitrage. This poses a significant number of risks and implications to the South African context, namely tax evasion; crossborder illicit flow of funds; contravention of exchange control regulations; financial instability; monetary policy uncertainty; inaccurate economic statistics; non-reporting of balance of payment requirements; and money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF). The study aims to construct a clear description and categorisation of virtual currencies within a South African context. Secondly, the study will set out the risks and implications that virtual currencies pose to the South African financial system from a ML/TF perspective. Finally, the study will present a possible solution to close the current regulatory arbitrage presented by virtual currencies in the South African financial sector. / Mini Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Mercantile Law / LLM Banking Law / Unrestricted

Magister Legum - LLM / South Africa’s main anti-money laundering legislation consists of 2 pieces of legislation, namely: The Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA)1 and the Prevention of Organised Crime Act (POCA).2 Money Laundering is often defined as the concealment of funds or property which has been obtained as the result of unlawful activity. It is also defined as giving the unlawfully obtained funds the appearance of legality when in actuality the funds or property is obtained unlawfully. POCA defines unlawful activity which includes any criminal offence in South African law, whether it has occurred in South Africa or elsewhere.3 Any person who has the knowledge of the aforementioned money laundering act or ought to have the knowledge may be guilty of an offence.

The first essay explores the demand for M1, M3 and broad money (BM) and economic uncertainty in Australia over the period 1976:2-2008:4. The results suggest that we have evidence of cointegration between money, economic activity, interest rate and price for the pre-deregulation sub-period. The long-run equilibrium relation is confirmed for post-regulation and for the entire sample once we augment the traditional money demand equation with measure of economic uncertainty. Once we account for uncertainty, the breakdown of the cointegration relationship between real money balance and economic activity disappear and our money demand equation better explain the overshooting of M3 during 1984. Our result has an implication on reopening an important policy question on the viability of framing monetary policy around monetary aggregate. The second essay investigates the impact of financial liberalization on consumption and GDP growth volatility and assess why such impact may differ across countries. We have strong evidence that liberalization is associated with lower consumption growth and output growth volatility. Our result confirms that the initial level of inequality and initial level of financial development help to explain heterogeneity across countries. Countries with better financial development benefit from reduction in consumption growth variability. On the other hand, countries with high initial level of inequality do experience an increase in consumption growth volatility. Overall, after controlling for institutional quality, macroeconomic reform and conflict, our result supports the negative association between financial liberalization and consumption growth volatility in subsequent periods. One possible implication of our result is that an effort to improve financial development and promote redistribution policy that reduces the level of inequality, help countries to reap the potential benefit of liberalization. The third essay presents a two-period model of money-in-the-utility-function to investigate the impact of ant-money laundering policy on crime. Our two- period model reveals that an increase in labor wage in legal sector unambiguously decrease the labor hours allocated for illegal sector by increasing the opportunity cost for illegal activities. However, the crime-reducing impact of anti-money laundry regulation and the probability of the agent to be caught require both parameters should be above some threshold. This threshold is a function of the marginal rate of substitution of `dirty' money for consumption and the responsiveness of illegal income to the policy parameter. Higher threshold implies the need for tougher anti-money laundry regime. Therefore, the marginal rate of substitution between `dirty' money and consumption, and the elasticity of illegal income to the policy parameter are the key in governing the formulation of the anti-money laundry policy.

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Written in response to a current gap in academic and industry based literature, this thesis was written on the topic of Trade Based Money Laundering (TBML) and risk assessment, within the banking context. Despite the increased use of TBML, most academic descriptions of money laundering have used the cash based model of placement and integration of large cash deposits acquired from criminal activity, which are then merged into legitimate pre-existing funds. However, there are a significant number of examples to show that cash transferred into goods and then shipped to other countries can be easier to move and less conspicuous or traceable than simple cash based deposits. One of the main challenges for detecting shipping based laundering techniques is that they involve a number of agencies sharing data and information, in order to catch the criminals. Simple banking checks may not always elicit the required information without verification from either customs or law enforcement agencies. The research sought to identify the current challenges and issues facing risk assessment professionals in the banking sector and to identify gaps in the current systems being used. The data collected included interviews and survey information taken from professionals working on AML risk assessment in banking and financial institutions from across the globe. In addition to the description of different money laundering schemes, much of the current academic discussion on money laundering in banking has focused on the regulation requirements for financial institutions to stop money laundering activity, but there has been little empirical guidance on how regulation can be adapted and implemented at the individual banking level. This research accessed a number of legal cases available in the public domain, which were analysed to see how and where some of the larger banks have failed to implement current anti-money laundering controls and to consider how this could impact on the detection of TBML activity. This research uses an Agency theory model to look at the pressures banks are under to manage client’s accounts efficiently, versus the requirements of outside regulation to undertake extensive checks on business transactions and accounts. Finally, the researcher proposed a simple risk matrix approach that developed the current thinking of client behaviour and transaction monitoring risk analysis associated with cash based laundering, to develop a four-point risk model that added geography and third party behaviour, to account for shipping and trade based laundering activity.