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Spain, not UK, is by far the most corrupt country in Europe. High rank spanish politicians are involved in the Panama Papers.
EDIT
Why the downvotes?
Factually incorrect? Don't think so: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-ad...
You don't like it. Fine, but don't downvote it.
The article (and the "Mafia Expert" it's about) are both idiotic. The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. It then tries to equate Mafia violence with financial firms refusing to hire 'whistleblowers', as if having your legs chopped off is in any way comparable to having a career issue. By similar logic, I could…
> The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. The premise was that the banks of London launder huge amounts of drug money... I don't necessarily agree with this article but you're just avoiding the points it makes.
We can see the slide in the USA PATRIOT Act which removed the "knowingly" from the original definition. Now you can do money laundering without even being aware of it, under the American definition, simply by interacting with money that was earned by criminals.
Once they started chipping away at the mens rea requirement, the standards had to be redefined. Now it's not enough to avoid money you know to be criminal. You also have to avoid money you merely suspect might be criminal, lest it later on turn out to be the result of crime and you get sucked in after the fact. Hence banks turning away people who want to deposit cash. The fact that the cash has innocent origins is insufficient.
Then they went further and defined money laundering as failing to do 'enhanced due diligence' on any transactions related to a 'politically exposed person'. There is no clear definition of either term, meaning banks have to make it up as they go along. But the spirit of the law is that a PEP is anyone who might conceivably be corrupt. This was meant to fight corruption by forcing banks to investigate anyone who might be receiving bribes. With no definition and heavy penalties for non-compliance, which by this time is entirely in the eye of the beholder, private firms sprang up to compile blacklists of PEPs, some of which contain millions of people. There is of course no way to get yourself off such a blacklist.
Now throw sanctions compliance into the concept of money laundering and now you can be an evil corrupting money launderer simply by processing a payment from a firm in country A to a firm in country B where there are no laws in either country A or B against the trade, and the firm in country B is run by a guy who some powerful bureaucrat has decided is in some way shady. No evidence or trial is required and there's usually no way to get yourself off such sanctions lists. One US list of sanctioned people is simply a list of names with no other clarifying information, meaning people with generic names end up being treated as guilty-until-proven-innocent.
By the time we're done, you realise that every bank in the world is guilty of the modern definition of money laundering, simply by virtue of working with money.
If you're interested in the topic of abuse of AML laws, read the book "Treasuries War".
The article (and the "Mafia Expert" it's about) are both idiotic. The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. It then tries to equate Mafia violence with financial firms refusing to hire 'whistleblowers', as if having your legs chopped off is in any way comparable to having a career issue. By similar logic, I could…
If you hold a position of trust (elected politician, policeman, bureaucrat, CEO, board member, employee representative, union boss), and you use the powers of that position to further some private interest rather than the interests of those you are set to serve, then you're corrupt. That's more or less Transparency International's definition, and I agree with it. But banks' trustees aren't the public. It's their depo…
So what? Money corrupts, this is not news. In any economy where you have regions of the world that specialise, there will be regions with lots of banks.
The article (and the "Mafia Expert" it's about) are both idiotic. The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. It then tries to equate Mafia violence with financial firms refusing to hire 'whistleblowers', as if having your legs chopped off is in any way comparable to having a career issue. By similar logic, I could…
> The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. I thought it was based on the premise that: London is the drug money laundering capital of the world and: 90 per cent of drug cash ends up in the US and Europe via London and: criminal corporate activities within the City of London which have dominated the headlines over…
According to our whistleblowing source, who has been asked to give evidence to the new Parliamentary Committee on Banking Standards, set up in the wake of the Libor scandal in June, banks tend to take a very dim view of employees who break ranks.
"No risk manager wants to admit that he didn't do his job. So an unholy alliance of mutual self-interest kicks in," the source, who asked to remain anonymous, said. "So they'll do anything to bad-mouth a whistleblower as an underperformer. They have a 100% success record."
This is literally a figure of speech from a single guy who considers himself to have been "bad-mouthed as an underperformer", yet in the Independent article it became:
Powerful financial firms will destroy the lives and reputations of whistleblowers. Newsnight found they have a 100 per cent success rate
... which not only mis-attributes the quote but makes it sound like an actual statistic related to "destroying lives".
This is the worst piece of journalism I've seen for a while.
The article (and the "Mafia Expert" it's about) are both idiotic. The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. It then tries to equate Mafia violence with financial firms refusing to hire 'whistleblowers', as if having your legs chopped off is in any way comparable to having a career issue. By similar logic, I could…
If you hold a position of trust (elected politician, policeman, bureaucrat, CEO, board member, employee representative, union boss), and you use the powers of that position to further some private interest rather than the interests of those you are set to serve, then you're corrupt. That's more or less Transparency International's definition, and I agree with it. But banks' trustees aren't the public. It's their depo…
I think anyone who had RBS shares before the bailout might disagree with you on that point!
Also, I wonder who the single largest shareholder of UK banks might be?
Spain, not UK, is by far the most corrupt country in Europe. High rank spanish politicians are involved in the Panama Papers.
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"
Also looking at you Switzerland.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. The premise was that the banks of London launder huge amounts of drug money... I don't necessarily agree with this article but you're just avoiding the points it makes.
Money laundering used to have a fairly precise definition when the crime was first invented in the 1970's: "knowingly working to disguise the origins of money gained through crime". But over time various people (primarily aggressive tough-on-crime politicians) have watered down the definition until it's now more like "any financial transaction that someone somewhere doesn't like". We can see the slide in the USA PATR…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The premise is that because corruption involves money and money involves banks and London has lots of banks, transitively, London is very corrupt. The premise was that the banks of London launder huge amounts of drug money... I don't necessarily agree with this article but you're just avoiding the points it makes.
Money laundering used to have a fairly precise definition when the crime was first invented in the 1970's: "knowingly working to disguise the origins of money gained through crime". But over time various people (primarily aggressive tough-on-crime politicians) have watered down the definition until it's now more like "any financial transaction that someone somewhere doesn't like". We can see the slide in the USA PATR…