Politically exposed persons. AML, taking the profit out of corruption and problems for the banks
| Published date | 08 August 2008 |
| Pages | 269-272 |
| Date | 08 August 2008 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13685200810889416 |
| Author | Mario Serio |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Politically exposed persons
AML, taking the profit out of corruption
and problems for the banks
Mario Serio
University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how political corruption may be combated through
measures aimed at making it less profitable and more subjected to public controls via banking reports
of all relevant deposits.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a brief description of a few European legal
Systems, Italian in particular.
Findings – The paper finds that organized crime can only be efficiently tackled and impoverished of
its economic enticements if political, institutional and economical complicities are publicly exposed
and forced to be halted; while society, and younger generations in particular, are made fully aware that
the embrace mafia tries to impose on them is and will always be deadly.
Practical implications – Evaluation of the possible solutions in terms of legislative reform.
Originality/value – The paper describes a novel standpoint.
Keywords Politics, Italy,Corruption, Banks, Money laundering,Criminals
Paper type Research paper
This presentation will briefly concentrate on the complex Italian experience in the field
of AML and on the intricacies that the phenomenon has been witnessing in the
political, banking, judicial sectors.
Originally, the widespread perception of the process through which illegally earned
money could be decontaminated of its infamous trademark was that it mostly applied
to kidnapping for the purpose of extorting money. This was particularly true in the
period covering at least two decades starting in the late 1960s.
The supposedly discouraging effect of the identification of the banknotes handed
over to the kidnappers by the victim’s relatives was seen as a way to complicate
matters in a criminal area that was fastly expanding all over the territory from
the south to the north and greatly flourishing. But that was not the case, owing to the
practical difficulty of tracing thousands and thousands of banknotes that were easily
spent in everyday life or deposited in foreign bank accounts.
And this is where the banking activity came in first: by turning a blind eye,
pretending to be unaware of the proceeds of the crime committed elsewhere in the
world, on the vast amounts of money that kept flowing in from clients whose identities
did not seem to matter that much so long as they provided bank safes with fresh
monetary resources.
The swiftest response that the government and the judiciary came up with, amidst
ferocious rows over the ethical and human side of the measure, was the making of
an order by the inquiring magistrates prohibiting all members of the kidnapped’s
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Politically
exposed
persons
269
Journal of Money Laundering Control
Vol. 11 No. 3, 2008
pp. 269-272
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1368-5201
DOI 10.1108/13685200810889416
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