Although the anti-money laundering laws of most countries are sound, the number of money laundering convictions worldwide remains relatively low, according to Daniel Thelesklaf, the executive director of the Switzerland-based Basel Institute on Governance. One of the reasons for the low number of prosecutions is that many financial intelligence units (FIUs) work as a "data collecting centers," capturing data on suspicious transactions without forwarding the information to investigators, said Thelesklaf. And many FIUs need to better train and retain qualified analysts that are able to identify suspicious data, he said. Thelesklaf, who formerly worked as the director of Switzerland's FIU,...
The contiguous stretch of land from Iraq to Tajikistan remains one of the riskiest geographies for financial institutions shielding themselves from money launderers and terrorist financiers, according to a Swiss nonprofit organization.