Economic Crime Law Blog
Freeze to Seize: Lessons from World War II
As is well known, one of the advantages of being on holiday is having the time to read the US State Department official historian’s 259-page report on US and allied attempts to confiscate German property after World War II, published in 1997. The reason for doing so, quite apart from the topic being intrinsically fascinating,…
Australian Sanctions Extravaganza
Having spent a week in Tasmania, I am now back to work, and what better way to emerge from holiday-induced wooziness than by delving into a couple of sanctions-related developments right here, Down Under! (Before I do that, though, can I digress for a moment’s appreciation of an airline. Not only do Link Airways fly…
In Fewer Words: Does International Law Prohibit the Facilitation of Money Laundering?
One never knows what others might find interesting, and it so happens that a recent article of mine has unexpectedly generated a fair bit of attention on LinkedIn. The lovely people from AML Intelligence have asked me to provide a short summary for those who are curious about the paper’s argument but do not have…
The European Court of Justice Strikes Down Public Access to Beneficial Ownership Information: First Thoughts
Since May 2018, the EU has been a trailblazer in mandating public access to beneficial ownership information, i.e. records of who actually owns companies as a matter of economic reality, as opposed to formal legal ownership. This came to abrupt halt yesterday, on 22 November 2022, with the EU’s Court of Justice ruling that the…
Publication alert… Sanctions and Trading With the Enemy; Money Laundering and Customary International Law
In the world of academia, if it was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, it does not exist! I hope you will forgive me for using this post to share two of my latest attempts at playing the publications game. The first of these, ‘Trading with a Friend’s Enemy’, is now out in the American…
Was OFAC Right to Sanction Tornado Cash?
In August 2022 the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed financial sanctions on the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, in a move that caused widespread consternation. This is potentially the first time that a truly decentralised cryptocurrency service provider — mixer or exchange — has become subject to sanctions. A month later, a…
Equatorial Guinea v France: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
This has been quite the delay, but I am back to blogging (I can almost hear the roar of jubilant crowds…). Given the state of the world, there is economic crime news aplenty, and so I will be posting regularly over the next several weeks. Perhaps the most bizarre development of the past month or…
The EU Proposal on Sanctions and Confiscation: Good, But Not Fit-for-Purpose?
Yesterday the European Commission unveiled two proposed instruments that deal with the freezing and seizure of assets. One of these is a Council Decision that would designate sanctions evasion as a serious crime within the EU’s competence, with a view to then setting the definition of the offence and applicable penalties. The other is a…
Sanctions Miscellany, Or What Would I Do If I Taught at Belarus State University?
Being an Orthodox Christian in Australia means having the benefit of two Easters, the local one and the real one. So, as the time for Easter egg-painting has not yet arrived — not that I have any clue how to do that, to be honest — it is hardly surprising that I spent part of…
How Does One Regulate Cryptocurrency Mixing?
A couple of weeks ago the Financial Times reported that the UK’s National Crime Agency had called for extending anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) rules to cryptocurrency mixers. The Financial Times writes: ‘Around 15 per cent of all proceeds of crime was routed through mixers in 2021, according to Elliptic, a group that analyses…
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