THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURAL LITERACY IN AML/CFT COMPLIANCE

A long time ago, as a young criminal defense lawyer primarily representing those drug trafficking clients for whom I laundered money, and who sometimes had the misfortune of being caught in the act, and arrested, I had a client detained with an associate, after a large amount of cocaine was found inside architectural plans in the back seat of the car his partner was driving.

My efforts to extricate my client from his situation revolved around taking the position that he was merely an innocent passenger in the vehicle, who had obtained a casual ride from the driver, and had no knowledge of the presence of the contraband. We had him submit to giving a statement, to prove up our version of the facts. As he did not speak English, there was a Spanish interpreter, from a traditional background.

When the Assistant States' Attorney asked him how he knew the driver, he replied that they both attended the same Santeria temple in Miami. Santeria is an exotic afro-Caribbean folk religion that combines Catholicism and African spiritual beliefs, and is associated by many with animal sacrifice, which is used to communicate with its deities. The translator explained his testimony as "he goes to my church." The prosecutor concluded that my client was an innocent passenger, and dropped all charges. It is notable to understand that this case took place not in Miami, but in the far more traditionally Florida city of Fort Lauderdale, where the prosecutor neither spoke any Spanish, nor was culturally aware of what the term "Santeria" meant, nor was the interpreter.

Cultural Literacy by a compliance officer means that one understands the AML/CFT industry's and therefore culture's signs and symbols, including its language, particular dialectic, stories, entertainment, idioms, history, idiosyncrasies, and so on. When a compliance officer sees a transaction that makes no economic sense, because he knows what his customer's business is all about, when he or she sees something that is inconsistent with what should be expected in the marketplace, or when something spied in a passport as account opening is spotted as out of place with an affluent customer, that is cultural literacy.

Whether that means a well-rounded knowledge of not only political geography, but the history of financial crime and associated money laundering tradecraft, so that transactions not otherwise deemed suspicious can be spotted in real-time, and interdicted, it is the application of knowledge, training and most of all hands-on experience, to frontline compliance tasks. Make very sure that you focus on engaging, and retaining, individuals who have that skill set, for they will find the bad actors every time.