At this week’s G20 Summit in Seoul, leaders of the top twenty economies are expected to confirm their commitment to implementing the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. The Convention deals in large part with measures to prevent money laundering and requires signatory countries to:
- Implement a comprehensive regulatory regime for banks and other entities to deter and detect all forms of money laundering.
- Ensure that domestic laws allow enforcement agencies to cooperate and exchange information with national and international counterparts.
- Implement measures to detect and monitor the movement of cash and negotiable instruments across borders without impeding the capital market system.
- Require financial institutions to record meaningful information for all electronic funds transfers throughout the payment chain.
- Promote global cooperation to combat money laundering.
- Designate as a criminal offence, the possession of proceeds of crime, the attempt to commit, aid or abet money laundering, and the conversion or transfer of property knowing it is proceeds of crime.
- Ensure that domestic criminal laws allow the knowledge, intent or purpose required to establish the elements of the offence of money laundering be capable of being inferred from facts.
- Ensure that the limitation period to prosecute money laundering offences is long or suspended.
- Facilitate the extradition of citizens or foreign nationals from signatory states to face money laundering charges or convictions abroad.
Several G20 nations, such as Germany, India, Japan and Saudi Arabia, are not Convention signatories and the discussion on enforcement mechanisms under the Convention may prove elusive.