The fight against money laundering (ML) has been at the core of the global policy agenda for many years, with a growing number of initiatives and efforts by different international actors and institutions to...
On 20th September, the School in collaboration with the Max Weber Programme, organised a seminar on “Tackling Money Laundering globally and in the EU” in the framework of the Financial in Tuscan Hills research seminar series.
The seminar hosted Dr Marcus Pleyer, former president of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body that sets international standards, aiming to prevent the global money laundering and terrorist financing.
Dr. Nikolai Badenhoop Max-Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, in his introductory remarks highlighted the relevance of Anti Money-Laundering (AML) and the need to tackle financial crime both at EU and global level.
Dr. Pleyer’s presentation focused on the current challenges in the fight against ML highlighting the following: globalisation, the digital transformation of the economy -which has facilitated illegal transactions and criminal activities in the digital space – and underlined some of the key weaknesses of existent AML frameworks that prevent effectively tackling criminals.
Dr. Pleyer described the global and European approach to AML, bringing to the room his experience as a former president of the FATF and how the task force has made significant efforts to set global standards and monitor countries’ compliance. With regards to the EU, he outlined some of the main elements of the new legislative package to strengthen the AML architecture through the recent proposal for a regulation to fight money laundering and counter terrorist financing.
In his final remarks, he highlighted how a more cooperative and multidisciplinary approach could help address the regulatory blind-spots and make the fight against financial crime and ML more effective.
A more detailed insight on the seminar will soon be published in one of our upcoming FBF Blogpost.
