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Ukraine has had to change in ten years from a strong centrally controlled communist economy to a market economy. It has not been successful. The purpose of this paper is to explain this failure from the complexity management point of view.

This paper takes a cybernetic view of the attempts at Governance in Ukraine over its transition period. To diagnose the problem a novel approach based on the Viable Systems Methodology of Stafford Beer is used.

Serious structural flaws are identified in the organisation of governance at the national level and it is shown how these inadequacies induced the formation of mutant abnormal strategies at the level of economic agents.

Presents credible explanations of phenomena such as barter, corruption, growth of overdue debts and the existence of incentives (other than profit maximizing ones) which drive the behaviour of firms.

There are many explanations of the same phenomena in contemporary economic literature but our explanations are based purely on an analysis of the complexity management tasks performed at each level of recursion: from a government to a firm. Moreover, the paper shows that the structural specificity of a system shapes the behavioural patterns of each systemic element, would it be a government body or a firm's management. Therefore, the notion of structural determinism allows one to state that structure defines the dynamics of any systemic change.

The purpose of this paper is to cut through the rhetoric that shrouds Russia's anti‐money laundering regime to uncover the reality that lies beneath.

This paper relies on both primary and secondary sources in Russian and English that deal with the problems of money laundering in the Russian context. Relevant sections of the Russian Criminal Code as well as Russia's anti‐money laundering regulations have been consulted.

Overall, the Russian anti‐money laundering regime has thus far proved ineffective in terms of meeting its stated purposes of combating organized crime and terrorism. Its limited success stems largely from structural weaknesses in the Russian banking system as well as that industry's lack of a culture of regulatory compliance. Moreover, Russian authorities have opportunistically seized on the current anti‐money laundering regime as a useful tool in the pursuit of ends unconnected to the fight against organized crime and terrorism. The Russian authorities have used the regime to attempt to reform the banking system and to extend their strategic control in the domestic political and business realms. The ineffectiveness of the anti‐money laundering regulations and their usage to achieve ulterior aims undermine the legitimacy of the regime as a whole.

The paper looks beyond the technical difficulties in applying the anti‐money laundering regulations and examines the misuses of the anti‐money laundering regime in the Russian context. However, the problems raised in the paper are not unique to Russia and have relevance to other jurisdictions, especially countries that are members of the Financial Action Task Force.