What happens if we win the war?

During a previous global war, the Second World War, an academic turned temporary civil servant in the British government, William Beveridge, tried to imagine a different post-war world. The Beveridge Report was published in 1942 and after the war became the basis of what is now known as the ‘Welfare State’. The publication of the Beveridge Report was initially delayed because the British minister of finance considered that it involved “an impracticable financial commitment”. At the time, the financial cost of the Second World War was crippling for Britain (and many other countries). Nonetheless, the policy went ahead and changed the lives of tens of millions of British people for the better in the post-war period. Beveridge identified five Giant Evils which he thought should be addressed: Ignorance, Want, Squalor, Idleness and Disease.

These evils still stalk the world, now adversely affecting the lives of not millions but billions of people. This chapter imagines how a victory over dirty money would free up the resources to change the world. These resources could make a real difference. The amount of lost tax, for example, converted into dirty money each year, is estimated at US$483 billion.

Where prevention fails enforcement should follow

The prevention part of the current War on Dirty Money costs an additional US$210 billion, and the cost keeps rising. This could be described as ‘an impracticable financial commitment’. Against this background our proposals for winning the war through enforcement seem absurdly cheap. This US$210 billion is currently spent on trying, but unfortunately failing, to prevent dirty money from entering the global financial system. Of the hundreds of thousands of people engaged in this prevention effort, almost all of them in the private sector, are failing to receive the support they deserve from governments. We recognise that prevention is better than enforcement, but it is our view that criminal enforcement has not yet been achieved or, we argue, even been seriously attempted. That is not to downplay the effort of the few people engaged in enforcement against dirty money; they are doing what they can. They are just absurdly few in number, generally underpaid relative to private sector compliance staff, and under-supported by their own colleagues in criminal justice.