Читать книгу Anti-Money Laundering State Mechanisms - Michele Sciurba - Страница 10

Over the last 20 years, technical developments have contributed to the globalisation at an ever-accelerating pace in all areas of communication, capital flows and international trade in goods. Organised crime does not stop at national borders but rather adapts itself to new regulatory developments.³⁶ By the time of the establishment of the FATF, the First European Anti-Money Laundering Directive (1st AMLD)³⁷, and the adoption of the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988, the fight against ML and financial crimes had become a central matter for international cooperation. After 9/11, the urgent question of how to detect and prevent terrorist financing was coupled with the question of how to prevent ML, as the shock waves of the attacks significantly shook the Western world. President Bush issued a series of executive orders aimed at destroying the basis for funding terrorist organisations and terrorists. The Bush administration created new investigative bodies, such as the Policy Coordinating Committee on Terrorist Financing,³⁸ to coordinate measures against terrorist financing in the US.³⁹ Finally, the USA Patriot Act was adopted at an unprecedented speed in order to provide an effective tool against international terrorism and terrorist financing.

The Act declared several business and financial transactions illegal, greatly expanded existing law enforcement powers and forced financial institutions to establish new customer due diligence measures. At the same time, the Act has considerably weakened privacy and confidentiality laws, providing for severe penalties in case of non-compliance by financial institutions.⁴⁰ In Title III, the Act contains various provisions that greatly expand the AML and CTF regime. In section 311, the Patriot Act extends the scope of the BSA by adding section 5318A U.S. Code (USC)⁴¹.⁴² The Secretary of the Treasury now has the authority to impose measures in the AML and CTF context that have extraterritorial effect.⁴³