Reliable banking soures inside Venezuela report that the country's foreign currency cash reserves, currently held in US Dollars, will soon be moved into Euros. Will the billions of illicit dollars owned by corrupt PEPs , held in banks throughout the Western Hemisphere, make the same move, and expose Europe's bankers to new risks ?

When a country is removed from the FATF blacklist, is it really wise to radically alter the way in which you practise Due Diligence on its nationals ? Do you downgrade from enhanced due diligence or not ? This question comes to mind every time the Financial Action Task Force takes a name off the shrinking list. Should we not look at each country on a case-by-case basis ? Let us look at this one.

Business Process Outsourcing, or BPO, where financial institutions place call centres and back-office operations in India and elsewhere, has been in the news lately due to fraudsters penetrating these locations. Sound background checks as part of a stringent screening process are mandatory with new hires, in order to make informed hiring decisions.

Millions of Dollars in narcotics profits is being smuggled in bulk unimpeded into Mexico, where it must somehow enter the financial system. That is accomplished by a number of casas de cambio and Mexican financial institutions, who aid local laundrymen in moving the US currency back into the United States. What you, compliance officer for an American bank, must do is identify this dirty money before it passes through your bank and goes to work as operating capital for international drug cartels. Pay attention.

In a ruling that dealt a blow to prosecutors, a federal court has held that the government cannot discourage companies who are cooperating from paying the attorneys fees for indicted employees. This decision, which implicitly criticises the government's controversial policy of threatening corporations exposed to criminal charges with failure to render full cooperation if they pay their staffs' defense attorneys, should remove the threat of abandonment currently being felt by bank mangement and compliance alike.

US congressmen seeking to pass an all-inclusive internet gambling prohibition have alleged that world wide web gambling sites represent opportunities for money laundering. Inasmuch as the UK and US governments have taken opposite positions on this topic, a quick review of the options available to laundrymen seeking to move illicit finds through internet gambling is in order.

Sometime this year, in private conference rooms in Colombia, in Panama and in Venezuela, a group of profesionals who invest narco-cash will most certainly discuss the laundering opportunities the future presents. One of these is the adoption of the Euro by nine countries over the next couple of years. You should be aware of the fact that money launderers are always on the lookout for new opportunities to invest the proceeds of crime in the financial world, and they adapt to the changing dynamics of the marketplace. Like good chess players, they often plan several moves ahead.

The Union of Myanmar remains the sole holdout non-cooperative country on the Financial Action Task Force blacklist. Don't look for it to get off the list anytime soon, either, if its own Central Bank is to be believed.

There's a saying in the world of narcotics trafficking: never put the money and the drugs together. Laundrymen, who are charged with protection of the cash, are rarely involved in front-line criminal activity, especially of the violent sort, because if they die or are caught, there goes the money, too. In the world of terrorist financing, however, we find that is not necessarily the case.

Once you have verified PEP status, Know Your Customer procedures must extract critical information necessary to determine if the client poses an unacceptable level of risk, or can be a good customer who merely requires account monitoring. These suggested questions are intended to expose any aspects of the financial profile of a Politically Exposed Person that will render him or her a danger to your institution.