Are Higher Suspicious Transaction Report Volumes Associated with More Future Money-Laundering Convictions?

Rasmus Ingemann Tuffveson Jensen, Sebastian Holmby Hansen and Kalle Johannes Rose

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Almost all countries require banks to file suspicious transaction reports (STRs) to help authorities detect and prosecute money laundering. The number of STRs filed in a country is an often-cited metric in international anti-money laundering (AML) compliance evaluations. However, it remains unclear if the volume of STRs filed in a country is associated with the country's future number of money laundering convictions. Using data from Europol, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, we examine if STR volumes can be associated with future money-laundering conviction volumes in countries in the European Union. Our analysis employs pooled and fixed-effects regression models with one- to five-year lags, controlling for population sizes, shadow-economy estimates, and police force sizes. In our pooled and country-specific fixed-effects models, STR volumes appear to be positively associated with future convictions. However, the association weakens and becomes insignificant when we control for both country-specific and common time effects. Our results provide a caution against assuming that STR volumes, by themselves, are reliable indicators of future money-laundering convictions and, to the extent convictions reflect outcomes, AML effectiveness.

Date: 2025-08, Revised 2026-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-law and nep-mac
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.18932 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2508.18932

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().