UK Defenses Against Money Launderers Overwhelmingly Effective: FATF

Tom Keatinge, director of the center for financial crime and security studies at RUSI, a London-based policy center, said the U.K. deserves “considerable credit” for having used the FATF evaluation as “motivation” to shore up its AML regime in recent years. However, “fundamental issues of concern” remain around the integrity of the corporate registry, criminal exploitation of legal entities and the frequent involvement of the British Virgin Islands and other U.K. offshore jurisdictions in global money-laundering schemes, Keatinge said. “There’s a lot of work to do,” Keatinge said. “The question is, having put so much energy and resource into the process, what will replace the steel of FATF in the U.K.’s back?”