Financial Transparency Coalition

There is just a week to go before the start of the Hidden Money, Hidden Resources conference in Lima, organized by the Financial Transparency Coalition and Latindadd, and the agenda covers a number of topics which are highly relevant to the Americas. The panel I´ve been invited to moderate, for example, will be exploring the links between citizen security, organized crime, corruption and money-laundering. Latin America and the Caribbean as a region has the highest levels of citizen insecurity in the world, and is the only region where criminal violence increased between 2000 and 2010 according to UNDP.

Did you know that it can take more information to obtain a driver’s license than to start your very own anonymous shell company with which you can use and abuse the U.S. financial system? In a matter of minutes, and with minimal documentation, you can own a company without disclosing that you are, in fact, the owner. These opaque entities are a favorite tool of terrorists, drug traffickers, arms dealers, corrupt government leaders, tax evaders and other criminals to launder money into the U.S.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon signed a bill, unanimously passed by the Senate, today aiming to crack down on money laundering that according to experts may account for at least $10 billion every year in Mexico, or as high as $50 billion, according to estimates from Global Financial Integrity. The bill prohibits the giving or accepting of cash payments greater than half a million pesos ($38,750) for real estate purchases, as well as forbidding cash transactions of more than 200,000 pesos ($15,500) for items such as cars, jewelry or lottery tickets.

Criminals, especially drug traffickers, may have laundered around $1.6 trillion, or 2.7 per cent of global GDP, in 2009, according to a new report by UNODC. This figure is consistent with the 2 to 5 per cent range previously established by the International Monetary Fund to estimate the scale of money-laundering. Less than 1 per cent of global illicit financial flows is currently being seized and frozen, according to the report Estimating illicit financial flows resulting from drug trafficking and other transnational organized crime. "Tracking the flows of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organized crime and analysing how...