The leak of millions of records purporting to show widespread exploitation of offshore financial centers by global leaders, lenders and criminals is expected to draw governmental scrutiny of illicit finance, however unevenly.
The Obama administration is pushing lawmakers to introduce legislation that would require corporations to obtain tax identification data that could be turned over to investigators.
U.S. officials will formally propose this month a long-planned rule that would require banks to identify the owners of their corporate clients, according to an Office of Management and Budget schedule.
Intergovernmental plans to better identify corporate owners will do little to thwart financial crooks, even at great cost to banks and governments, according to an academic report on offshore financial flows.
EU parliamentarians voted Tuesday to require member-states to update their laws targeting money launderers and the financiers of terrorism, in part by naming corporate owners.
A European Parliamentary committee Thursday approved far-reaching changes to the EU's rules combating money laundering and terrorist financing, including an amendment that would require nations to publicize corporate owners.
A U.K. plan to name the owners of privately-held corporations will help shine a light on shell companies, but how revealing that effort will be remains uncertain.
British asset management firms are failing to adequately address their vulnerabilities to money laundering, bribery and corruption, the United Kingdom's chief financial regulator said Thursday.
British officials are set to propose legislation that would require private corporations and limited liability partnerships to publicly disclose their individual owners, a U.K. minister said Monday.
U.N. and U.S. sanctions against the Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the largest militant Islamist groups operating in the world, have done little to stem its finances, according to Amit Kumar, the fellow for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at the Center for National Policy.
U.S. Treasury Department officials are weighing whether to exempt trusts and offer more flexibility on verification requirements in an upcoming proposal that would impose data collection duties on corporate accounts held at banks.
Critics of a U.S. Treasury Department plan to strengthen beneficial ownership reporting by financial institutions aired their concerns to Obama administration officials at a rare public hearing Tuesday.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday that it was considering imposing customer due diligence currently applied to private banking and correspondent accounts to all accountholders at depository institutions.
Calls for a survey of how U.S. banks monitor high-risk accounts are likely to be ignored even if such a review would expose anti-money laundering compliance gaps, say industry experts.
A Miami-based bank is expected to agree to pay between $10 million and $15 million to the U.S. government in the next month for Bank Secrecy Act violations, according to individuals familiar with the matter.
An ousted Tunisian leader's transfer of suspect funds into Western bank accounts highlights the pitfalls financial institutions face when they maintain relationships for foreign political leaders, say analysts.
After 11 days of testimony and three days of deliberations, a Texas jury found former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay guilty on Wednesday of laundering nearly $200,000 in illicit corporate donations.
The trial of former U.S. lawmaker Tom DeLay for allegedly laundering campaign funds will likely hinge on whether Texas state prosecutors can prove he attempted to cover up corporate donors, say lawyers.
An intergovernmental group said Wednesday that it was considering asking countries to make tax evasion a predicate crime of money laundering and to issue tougher AML standards on political figures.
In the hours and days that followed the devastating earthquake in Haiti, little thought was paid to anything but rescuing those trapped and caring for survivors. As the dust settled, financial institutions on the ground have contended with a lesser trouble: anti-money laundering.