Posts by Laurence Howland

You would think that with all the legal and regulatory focus on money laundering, it would be comparatively simple to define. Not so. Even within the AML sector, many people struggle to articulate a clear definition of money laundering, and those who can offer a succinct definition are rarely completely in agreement with one another.…

On the 4 August the National Crime Agency announced that they had arrested a 33-year-old Chinese national in Teesside “…as part of a National Crime Agency investigation into a suspected Chinese underground banking network”. They went on to say that the investigation relates to “…the alleged laundering of criminal cash through so-called Daigou shopping, where…

Juvenal, a Roman poet writing around the beginning of the 2nd Century AD, stated in one of his Satires that “a perfect wife is a rare bird in the land, and rather like a black swan”. Those of us tempted to credit Juvenal with egalitarian views of women, or at least with a genuine devotion to…

On the 24 February 2022, Russian troops moved into the Donbas region of Ukraine in what President Vladimir Putin described as a “special military operation” and most Western countries described as a full-scale invasion. In the wake of this military incursion, many countries including the UK hurriedly implemented a wide range of sanctions against Russian…

The Criminal Finance Act 2017 (CFA17) received Royal Assent in April 2017 and began to come into force on the 30 September the same year, with a rolling programme of measures designed to strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to tackle fraud, tax evasion and the movement of criminal cash and assets. The story…