Money laundering, Tax havens, Transparency and Board of Directors of Banks

Euphemia Godspower-Akpomiemie and Kalu Ojah

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Among other characteristics, money laundering notably occurs across national borders and primarily through banks, and mainly because banks, which are both legitimate and ‘ubiquitous’ financial services institutions, engage primarily in financial intermediation. We ask, are the levers of control over banks’ involvement in money laundering and other financial crimes, more effective when pulled from the outside by government agencies or is there a less arm’s-length role for banks’ board of directors, by way of appropriately nuanced corporate governance? To answer this question, we first attempt to understand money laundering, its antecedents, its support mechanisms, and then how it may be tamed; with emphasis on the potential productive role of banks’ boards. At a general and/or high level, we recommend that the intervention of banks’ boards must focus (i.e., insist) on: (i) the primacy of transparency and upholding of both real and perceived reputational capital of the bank, and (ii) ascertaining that their banks’ relations with corresponding banks distributed across several national borders or association with banks domiciled in notorious tax havens, are demonstrably above board.

Keywords: Money laundering; Tax haven; Banks; Board of director; Emerging economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G2 G21 G34 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-03-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/89550/1/MPRA_paper_89550.pdf original 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:pra:mprapa:89550

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().