Introduction
In the previous two columns the prevailing architecture of global anti money-laundering regulation under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was introduced by way of the seven major groupings of the targeted areas within which this structure is organized. The principal items, which are focused on in each of these groupings have also been addressed. In the course of that presentation, much emphasis has been placed on the fact that the FATF had emerged from a radical turnaround in the attitudes of the leading industrial nations to the negative impacts Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs) were having on their national economies.
These adverse impacts were clearly due to 1) the explosive growth in tax evasion (which was systematically undermining the fiscal capacities of their states); 2) the corrupting/undermining influences (social, economic and political) of those organized criminal networks that were associated with globally organized tax evasion; and later 3) the devastating impact of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The Caribbean Financial Task Force (CFATF), however, emerged out of the national indignation and outrage the OFCs felt on the announcement of the formation of the FATF. That organisation was portrayed at the time as an outright betrayal of poor countries by rich ones. Politically, and ideologically, these initial responses by the
