Anti-money laundering law: a new legal regime to combat financial crime in Malaysia?
| Published date | 04 July 2016 |
| Pages | 533-541 |
| Date | 04 July 2016 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-07-2014-0033 |
| Author | Aspalella A. Rahman |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & Finance,Financial risk/company failure,Financial crime |
Anti-money laundering law:
a new legal regime to combat
nancial crime in Malaysia?
Aspalella A. Rahman
School of Law, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Malaysia
Abstract
Purpose – Before the enactment of the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act
2001 (AMLATFA), the ght against nancial crime can be found in several statutes such as the Penal
Code, Anti-Corruption Act 1997 and Companies Act 1965. It is generally accepted that by freezing and
forfeiting the proceeds of the crime, it would give signicant impact on the ght against nancial crime.
However, under these legislations, there were few shortcomings of the procedures on how the proceeds
of the crime could be seized and forfeited. As such, the enactment of the AMLATFA is considered timely
to overcome these problems. This paper aims to examine how the AMLATFA could be utilized to
combat nancial crime in Malaysia.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper mainly relies on statutes as its primary sources of
information. As such, the relevant provisions under the Malaysian anti-money laundering laws that
relate to measures for freezing, seizure and forfeiture of proceeds of the crime will be identied and
analyzed.
Findings – The AMLATFA provides innovative tools for the law enforcement ofcials to follow the
money trail, which will eventually lead to those who committed the nancial crime. It also provides
authorities with more powerful seizure and forfeiture measures. This is seen as a new law enforcement
strategy to combat nancial crime. It is believed that this approach is more effective than the traditional
approach, which only punished the individual criminal but failed to diminish the criminal operations.
However, it is vitally important to ensure that the effectiveness of the regime must not jeopardize the
innocent third parties who could lose their money or any other proprietary interest due to the invocation
of the forfeiture order.
Originality/value – This paper analyzes the new legal regime under the Malaysian anti-money
laundering law that can be invoked to combat nancial crimes activities. This paper would provide
some guidelines into this particular area for legal enforcement authorities, academics, legal
practitioners and policy makers, not only in Malaysia but also elsewhere.
Keywords Financial crime, Anti-money laundering law
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Financial crime may be dened as a variety of crimes against property, involving the
unlawful conversion of property belonging to another to one’s own personal use and
benet (Henning, 2009). Normally, it involves fraud, corruption, money laundering,
insider trading and the like. Financial crime is prot-driven crime to gain access to and
control over property that belonged to someone else (Gottschalk, 2010). Pickett and
Pickett (2002) dene nancial crime as the use of deception for illegal gain, normally
involving breach of trust and some concealment of the true nature of the activities.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1359-0790.htm
Anti-money
laundering
law
533
Journalof Financial Crime
Vol.23 No. 3, 2016
pp.533-541
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1359-0790
DOI 10.1108/JFC-07-2014-0033
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