"THERE ARE PLENTY OF ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING EXPERTS, BUT NO REAL MONEY LAUNDERING EXPERTS"

The quote appearing in the title of this article, which was received as a response to our pending series, Tradecraft 101, is a rare acknowledgement that compliance officers, by and large, are woefully ignorant of the advanced methods and techniques in current use by professional money launderers in the countries of the European Union, and in North America. Feedback that I am receiving confirms that so-called anti-money laundering experts know how to check the box, and employ anti-money laundering software for Customer Identification, and for Transaction Monitoring, yet still do not recognize sophisticated tradecraft when they find it. is that the real reason why most money laundering and financial crime operations conducted through financial institutions are not interdicted on a real-time basis?

If we don't start to see actual master classes on technique, conducted in-house by people who actually know what they are doing, and less certificate collecting by AML "experts," we will continue to see only the belated exposure of money laundering at the world's biggest banks and non-bank financial institutions, by law enforcement agencies after the fact, long after dirty money has been placed, washed and invested, skewing the legitimate economy, and after delivering economic power to criminal elements on a global basis. Do they own the hotel where you held that pricey AML conference?

There needs to be, at least semi-annually, internal training of compliance officers, as money laundering is constantly evolving, repeatedly infecting new types of legitimate industries and businesses, by updating frontline staff with regular infusions of newly-found methods as they appear. Those outdated compliance conferences and seminars simply aren't doing the job, as the people who know the material aren't giving the lectures, only posers without hands-on experience, appending multiple professional AML/CFT qualification initials after their names, but not explaining specifically how money launderers operate, and what tricks they employ to consistently beat the banks every day of the week.