Setting the international standards – FATF

Introduction

As I continue the series on money laundering and looking back on last week’s column, perhaps the main original contribution so far has been putting forward the thesis that there have been three principal drivers pushing money laundering and related concerns to the level of the massive global threat these now represent. As noted, these three drivers are tax evasion, organized crime and racketeering, and terrorist financing and its proliferation. In actuality though, these three drivers comingle and I have identified them separately only for purposes of analysis and presentation of the thesis.

Thus experience shows that few, if any of the major criminal networks found to be involved in organised money laundering are not motivated simultaneously by more than one driver. Despite this practice, it is still fair to claim that Guyana’s money laundering is firmly located within the second driver; that is organized crime and racketeering,