The State Department’s Misguided Money‐​Laundering Wish List

A couple of decades ago, there were no laws against money laundering. Instead, governments fought crime by...well...fighting crime. Then politicians came up with the idea of making it illegal to use the proceeds of crime. This was not necessarily a bad idea. After all, crime theoretically will be reduced by polices that either increase the expected punishment or lower the expected rewards. Unfortunately, anti-money laundering laws have been an expensive failure. They costs billions of dollars yet there is no peer-reviewed literature showing that they have any impact on crime. Heck, they don’t even stop crooks from laundering funds. Yet the myopic bureaucrats at the State Department publish an annual report hectoring other nations to make their anti-money laundering laws more intrusive and burdensome. Richard Rahn’s Washington Times op-ed reviews some of the sillier suggestions:

This month, the State Department has set a new record by managing to insult the citizens of 123 different lands at one time in the "International Narcotics Control Strategy Report: Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes." The 450-page report discusses what other countries are doing to reduce money laundering and financial crimes, which is fine. But then the authors go on gratuitously lecturing each of the countries by name about how they could do things "better." To understand the total hypocrisy of the State Department nags, it is important to remember that more money laundering goes on in the United States than anywhere else, and that the U.S. is the world's biggest market for illegal drugs. The Report…is filled with endless demands that other countries do a better job enforcing their laws, pass more laws, sign more international treaties and engage in some practices that would be illegal and unconstitutional in the U.S. Many of the demands would not meet a reasonable cost-benefit test… Some examples: The Belgians "should strengthen the adherence to reporting requirements by some nonfinancial entities, such as lawyers and notaries," so says State, while completely ignoring the importance of lawyer client confidentiality. …To the Germans they say, "Amend legislation to waive the asset-freezing restrictions in the EU Clearinghouse for financial crime and terrorism financing, so that the freezing process does not require a criminal investigation." Perhaps, the folks at State Department forgot there are certain historical reasons why the Germans now insist on strong legal protections against a potentially abusive state. The Greeks (and others) are told, "Abolish company-issued bearer shares, so that all bearer shares are legally prohibited." Maybe the State Department gurus were unaware that bearer shares are perfectly legal in some states in the U.S., such as Nevada, and can serve a sound economic and personal privacy purpose. The authors say the government of Dominica "should eliminate its program of economic citizenship." But then again, maybe they were unaware that many, if not most, countries allow permanent residency and/or citizenship (including the U.S.) to noncitizens who invest a certain amount in their adopted homeland. …Singapore is told that it "should add tax and fiscal offenses to its schedule of serious offenses." Perhaps again, it did not occur to the folks in State that the highly educated and prosperous citizens of Singapore are quite capable of figuring out for themselves which laws ought to be "serious offenses."