Follow the Money? Does the International Fight Against Money Laundering Provide a Model for the International Fight Against

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Follow the Money? Does the International Fight
Against Money Laundering Provide a Model for the
International Fight Against Human
Trafficking? Karen E. Bravo, Associate Professor
of Law, Indiana University Indianapolis,
kbravo_at_iupui.edu
Methodology In this project, I examine and
compare top-down versus bottom-up stimulus for
action the institutions participating in the
regimes the standard setting and information
gathering methodologies the status of the
standards created treaty law versus soft law
perceived neutrality of standards identity and
power of the participants, including experts and
civil society self-assessments and mutual
evaluations and the enforcement mechanisms used
effective multilateral shunning versus threat
of unilateral sanctions.  
Two Crimes
Human Trafficking -- uncompensated exploitation
of human beings for profit is often described
as modern slavery. To extract services and to
trade the person, the trafficker exercises
control over the trafficked person not through
legal ownership, but rather through illegal use
of physical force or coercion and/or the
application of psychological forms of coercion.
 
Through the laundering of money, an individual or
entity attempts the conversion of criminal
income into assets that cannot be traced back to
the underlying crime. The purpose of laundering
the proceeds and profits from criminal activities
is to allow the criminal to enjoy the fruits of
the underlying criminal activity within the
legitimate economy, while at the same time
disguising the criminal source of that money.  

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http//www.njslom.org/featart0306.html
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Introduction  Trafficking in human beings,
characterized as modern day slavery, has
emerged as a global problem. According to the
U.S. State Departments 2008 Trafficking in
Persons Report, 170 of the worlds countries have
a significant trafficking problem and are
countries of destination, origin, and/or or
transit. Through the mechanism of money
laundering, the proceeds derived from a
multiplicity of criminal activities are
integrated into international or domestic
financial and banking sectors so that
perpetrators of the crimes may enjoy their
profits within the legitimate economy. This
project explores whether the Financial Action
Task Forces (FATFs) international anti-money
laundering regime may serve as a useful model for
international anti-trafficking efforts and
whether the institutional standards and
methodologies of the anti-money laundering regime
can be adapted and successfully deployed in the
fight against trafficking in human beings.
Two Reactions
Anti-Human Trafficking In 2000, the United
Nations Convention on Transnational Organized
Crime, together with the Protocol to Prevent,
Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,
Especially Women and Children were opened for
signature. Also in 2000, the United States
Congress enacted the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act. An important part of the
legislation is the U.S State Departments annual
Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report), which
directs that countries be ranked according to
their level of compliance with the minimum level
of anti-trafficking efforts specified by
Congress. Countries whose efforts do not satisfy
the specified standards face the threat of U.S
sanctions.   The 2001 TIP Report ranked 23
countries at Tier 3 (non-compliant with minimum
standards). While information gathering,
scholarly research, legislative enactments, and
law enforcement task force formation and
enforcement actions have increased substantially,
there is little evidence of a decrease in the
trafficking of human beings. The 2008 TIP Report
ranked 14 countries at Tier 3 and 40 countries in
the Tier 2 watch list (non-compliant but making
efforts to do so).
Anti-Money Laundering The G-7 created the FATF,
an independent inter-governmental organization in
1989. The organizations Forty Recommendations
form the baseline standards for the international
fight against money laundering by countries and
banking and financial systems and institutions.
In 2000, the FATF issued a list of
Non-Cooperative Countries and Territories
(NCCTs), naming countries whose banking and
financial laws and regulations did not meet the
standards set forth in the Recommendations.
  The initiative appears to be quite successful.
The 2000 Initial Report included fifteen
countries and territories six additional
jurisdictions were named as NCCTs in the 2001
Report. In late 2007, the FATF issued the
updated list No countries or territories
remained on the list all of the formerly
noncompliant states and territories are now
compliant or their compliance is in the process
of being confirmed.
Conclusion Although no definitive answer is yet
possible regarding the relative effectiveness and
success of the two regimes, it does appear that,
if success means effective norm creation,
dissemination, and penetration enforcement
mechanisms global coordination and cooperation
through a single-purpose, powerful international
body with limited membership and broad
participation, the FATFs anti-money laundering
mission and campaign is more effective..   The
apparently greater compliance of states with the
international anti-money laundering regime may
evidence the greater political will and
coordination of powerful states on a matter that
is deemed to be vastly more important to those
states and central to their continued dominance,
i.e., the health and control of the transnational
monetary, financial, and banking networksthan is
the trafficking of humansmerely a more severe
form of already widespread exploitation of
individual humans.
Peter Reuter and Edwin M. Truman, Chasing Dirty
Money The Fight Against Money Laundering 1
(2004).