In an article published on August 30, 2017, Bass, Berry & Sims attorney Thad McBride commented on a recent report criticizing the current Anti-money Laundering (AML) legal and enforcement regime. Thad acknowledges “It’s hard to argue with a lot of the policy recommendations the author makes, though I also suspect that the practical challenge of implementing some of the policies would be significant.”
Another recommendation in the report is to prosecute violators at the individual level, in addition to the company level. Thad notes that “What prosecutors would likely say is that bringing criminal charges against individuals is a good bit harder than successfully bringing criminal charges against companies, which is perhaps why the Yates Memo explicitly encourages cooperation between the DOJ’s [Department of Justice] criminal and civil enforcement officials; it is considerably easier to prove a civil case than to prove a criminal one.”
The full article, “U.S. AML Laws ‘A Decimal Point Away From Complete Failure’,” was published by PaymentsCompliance on August 30, 2017, and is available online.