Revenge of the Money Launderers

Matt Taibbi über den FinCen-Skandal im Kontext früherer Geldwäsche-Strafzahlungen. Lehrreich und unterhaltsam, was bei komplexer Finanzskandal-Berichterstattung eher selten ist. Taibbi beschreibt auch noch einmal den wichtigen Unterschied zwischen Regulierung/Compliance auf dem Papier und Regulierung/Compliance in der praktischen Umsetzung:

„Every time compliance officers discover derogatory information that leads to an account being closed, it’s a direct hit to a bank’s revenues. On the other hand, to keep regulators off their backs, banks have to be seen to be doing all they can to sniff out illegalities. Therefore there’s an incentive for banks to cycle through creative ways of looking like they’re engaging in compliance, without actually doing so.

A bank might create sizable AML departments, but pad them with inexperienced, entry-level employees incapable of spotting problems (see here for the HSBC example I wrote about years ago). A firm may hire a top-of-the-line department head, but not give him or her real resources. Required hiring boxes may be checked, but the company may non-report or under-report problems. Companies may even generate huge numbers of suspicious activity reports while leaving key data like names or addresses missing.“