CORRUPTION AND MONEY LAUNDERING by D. CHAIKIN AND J.C. SHARMAN
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | MICHAEL LEVI |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00486.x |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
CORRUPTION AND MONEY LAUNDERING by D. CHAIKIN AND J.C.
SHARMAN
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 256 pp., £55.00)
This book examines the relationship between corruption and money launder-
ing, a relationship the authors view as symbiotic, and critically reviews the
controls currently available to reduce Grand Corruption. Both Australian
authors have spent some years researching this area and base their work on a
combination of legal scholarship, cases upon which Chaikin has worked as a
lawyer, and interviews with public and private sector officials. The result is a
valuable detailed study of the interplay between me asures aimed at
combating corruption and those aimed at combating money laundering,
and what is known about the impact of each, especially in parts of the Asia
Pacific region. Social and political theorists and general criminologists are
unlikely to be interested in it, unless they are willing to get into the detail,
but what the study shows is how important law and its independence of
application are to the investigation of cases and to the return of looted assets.
There is good coverage of the institutional and legal background to
conventions and treaties, and their national implementation. The authors are
explicitly normative in recommending particular courses of action to
enhance transnational action against laundering by or on behalf of corrupt
kleptocrats. They are critical of developed countries for failing, for example,
to sign up to Asia Pacific agreements; and of developing countries, for
failing to include national as well as foreign Politically Exposed Persons
(PEPs) in their requirements for enhanced due diligence. They are critical of
them also for failing to provide lists of people occupying senior public roles,
which would be helpful to financial institutions, lawyers, and so on, in
working out who should be subjected to Enhanced Due Diligence. They
point out that bankers sometimes do far more than is legally required,
preferring a harmonized global set of regulations for PEPs. Other than
recommending a harder line on regulating corporate service providers, the
corporate aspect of PEPs is less well considered in the book, but there are
good case studies to illustrate their points. Chaikin and Sharman reveal the
importance of Head of State immunity, noting the variation in levels of
immunity and the differences between those countries (like Switzerland) that
have rejected this as a constraint on repatriation of assets and those (like
France) that have accepted this constraint.
The book engages with some political issues, but it is far from being an
explicit political economy of control. For example, although the authors are
critical (p. 130) of the Japanese government's refusal to extradite the former
President of Peru, Fujimori, on the grounds that his claim to Japanese
citizenship was dubious, they do not push this further to discuss what reasons
Japan might have had for saving him. (After the book went to press, he was
jailed in Peru after extradition from Chile.) Prima facie, it would have been
easier politically to extradite him rather than gain a reputation for protecting
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ß2009 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2009 Cardiff University Law School
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