The Money Laundry por J.C. Sharman

Eduardo Morgan´s Blog invites you to read this interesting book about politics of global governance and the central importance of anti-money laundering as a site of global power.

THE MONEY LAUNDRY-Regulating Criminal Finance in the Global Economy, J.C. Sharman- Cornell University Press- Cornell Studies in Political Economy

The economic crisis the OECD countries are experiencing, and which has caused the dislocation of public finances and affected millions of people due to huge unemployment, has among others, its origins in the great immorality with which these countries have managed the financial system. The OECD´s geniuses failed to notice the creation of instruments without real substance or other “brilliant operations” to stimulate the speculative game, such as insuring them, for the sole purpose of speculation and profit. Yet, they were prompt and ready to attribute the crisis to the activities of the countries they call, in a pejorative manner, “tax havens” or offshore financial centers. It seems that those in control of the OECD were not aware that the IMF had determined that the so-called tax havens or offshore financial centers were better regulated and managed more seriously than the onshore centers which operate in OECD member countries. Thus the pejorative terms no longer made sense. (See Public Information Notice (PIN) No. 08/82July 9, 2008).

The book with which Professor Jason Sharman (https://www.griffith.edu.au/business-commerce/centre-governance-public-policy/staff/jason-sharman) now delights us, is the fascinating history of the creation and global dissemination of the guidelines to control the laundering of illegally acquired money (AML) and the way in which the initial interest to curb revenues from drug trafficking rapidly spread out to include all sorts of crimes. The book takes us by the hand to the development of the principles of “know-your-customer”; to know the source of their funds; to limit the movements of cash through its registration; and the creation of organizations such as the FATF and the Financial Analysis Units to set rules and oversee its compliance, in order to avoid dirty money from entering the financial system.

The most dramatic aspect of Professor Sharman´s book is the exhaustive and independent research in which the brilliant Australian professor embarks, on his own, to verify the effectiveness of the rules created by the FATF (i.e. G20). Sharman´s investigation clearly reveals that the OECD countries and not the countries in small financial centers, are the ones not complying with the rules imposed by themselves. Among them, the U.S.A. stands out as the worst transgressor.

Books like Sharman’s are expected to demonstrate that the OECD countries cannot continue hiding their double standard. With the purpose of improving financial ethics and for the welfare of humanity, they should start complying with the rules they themselves have established and account for their actions in front of the rest of the global financial community.