This chapter brings together the book’s analysis and argues that crucial yet feasible reforms can be made to the operation of the global anti-financial crime regime. They include distinguishing between various categories of regulated services, such that certain essential services – for example, basic bank accounts – must be provided to everyone but attract reporting obligations, whereas highly specialised services with a significant potential to facilitate money laundering – for example, high-end investment banking activities – must be refused if a suspicion arises that proceeds of crime are involved. The chapter also argues that the FATF Recommendations should be revised to explicitly require countries to maximise intelligence-gathering opportunities that serve law enforcement purposes while minimising the risk of complicity in money laundering, terrorist financing or proliferation financing. In particular, this should entail the requirement for countries to ensure that the regulated businesses’ AML/CTF compliance efforts are aligned with the country’s law enforcement priorities, whether through public–private partnerships, ‘keep open’ laws or other appropriate means.

This chapter focuses on two other key elements of the global financial crime regime beyond AML rules, namely CTF and targeted financial sanctions, and the challenges that they present. In particular, it discusses the shift from excluding criminal funds towards excluding specified persons themselves – be that designated terrorists or otherwise sanctioned persons – from the legitimate economy. The chapter first discusses the history of CTF measures and targeted sanctions. Then, it considers the challenges presented by targeted exclusion, which arise in the context of CTF as well as being inherent to the operation of targeted financial sanctions. Finally, the chapter parses out the difficult case of coerced payments, including criminal ransoms, terrorist ransoms and ransomware payouts.

Over the past decades, multiple areas of law – including anti-money laundering (AML), counterterrorist financing (CTF) and sanctions rules – have emerged that regulate the interactions of the legitimate economy with known or suspected criminals. These rules impose significant compliance burdens on regulated sectors and their effectiveness is often contested. Furthermore, they raise profound civil liberties questions, such as whether one can be excluded from banking or other services based on a mere suspicion of crime or what the permissible extent of financial surveillance is. Despite the growing recognition of the extraordinary role that AML/CTF and sanctions laws play in shaping our societies, there have been few attempts to trace in detail the historical evolution of global thinking about the dilemmas that those laws present, with a focus on key policy tensions rather than the mere development of laws and institutions. This chapter offers an introduction to the overall book project and outlines the policy intentions it studies.

This chapter addresses the growth of Islamic banks and finance in the UK. It begins with a brief historical overview of the informal institutions that were forerunners to Islamic banks and their development into a thriving global industry in which the UK is a leading player. It proceeds to survey the distinguishing features of Islamic banking and typical financial products before charting the innovative regulatory reforms that permitted the industry to expand. A section on the small volume of English case law highlights the standard but manageable issues arising from its continuing organic growth. The subsequent section models the two conventional theoretical approaches to the rise of Islamic banks and the regulatory means used to achieve it, as well as the problems with these interpretations. The final section sets out a pluralist response offering the best explanation and justification for these developments. It concludes with an appraisal of the problem of informal financial instruments and an optimistic assessment of the industry and the new formal institutions created, falling as they do within the general regulatory framework of the UK’s financial system.

This chapter addresses the abuse of charitable religion. It begins with a brief history of the abuse of religious charities. This draws out the entrenched legal requirements for charities to guard against administrative and purposive abuse, and highlights the resourcing and remit issues that the Charity Commission has faced since its inception. It notes the general success of Muslim or Muslim-led charities to contextualise five pressing contemporary concerns: Charity Commission effectiveness, unregulated domestic fundraising, terrorist financing, foreign funding and extremist exploitation. Taking these in order of difficulty, it acknowledges the ‘faith factor’ where relevant and notes the need for theory when addressing unresolved policy questions about potentially dangerous foreign and non-state influence over important domestic institutions. The penultimate section models the two conventional theoretical interpretations of these issues and their attendant problems. The final section offers a pluralist response and details the most sensible reforms.

This chapter first examines the situation of terrorism in the present world with the conclusion that without financial support, terrorist warfare and activities could not be sustained for very long. Next, the chapter addresses the 1999 Financing Terrorism Convention. In addition to the commission (provision or collection) of the offences defined in the Convention, Article 2(5) requires the criminalization of other activities, such as attempts, the participation as an accomplice in a defined offence, the organization of such an offence, or direction of others to commit such an offence as well as the intentional contribution to the commission of such an offence by a group acting with a common purpose, under certain defined circumstances. The chapter goes on to conduct a comparative study of the various modes of participation taking into account the jurisprudence of the ICTY, ICTR, ICC and other international/ised criminal tribunals. It is suggested that all the activities listed in Article 2(5) of the Financing Terrorism Convention, except attempt, be regarded as modes of liability rather than inchoate crimes.