There was a time in the tide of men, when ‘offshore’ jurisdictions were known as ‘tax havens’, when ‘money laundering’ was an unknown phrase, when ‘insider dealing’ was sport…
Abstract
There was a time in the tide of men, when ‘offshore’ jurisdictions were known as ‘tax havens’, when ‘money laundering’ was an unknown phrase, when ‘insider dealing’ was sport, when ‘bank secrecy’ was applied only to Switzerland, and when far flung islands offered only sun, sand and an exotic holiday experience.
As financial crime continues unabated as a growth industry, the frustration of the victims of those crimes seems to be growing exponentially. In the past the major concerns were…
Abstract
As financial crime continues unabated as a growth industry, the frustration of the victims of those crimes seems to be growing exponentially. In the past the major concerns were focused on how to deal with massive multi‐jurisdictional frauds, extradition, and the lack of international cooperation. With time, many of those concerns have, to a great extent, been alleviated.
A unifying theme apparent at this year's Symposium was the need for balance when lifting the veil of bank secrecy: (1) the need to protect civil liberties versus the need to fight…
Abstract
A unifying theme apparent at this year's Symposium was the need for balance when lifting the veil of bank secrecy: (1) the need to protect civil liberties versus the need to fight crime; (2) the bank's need to balance its role as policeman while furthering its commercial objectives; (3) the necessity of weighing international cooperation against the awareness that individual nations jealously guard their own legislative regime; (4) the dichotomy of technology that serves both to protect and penetrate secrecy; (5) the balance required when investigating crimes.
An ‘investor’ is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘one who invests money’. However, this traditional definition does not include the other stakeholders in the modern…
Abstract
An ‘investor’ is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘one who invests money’. However, this traditional definition does not include the other stakeholders in the modern corporation: persons such as employees, members of the pension fund, suppliers, the assured, depositors and the large numbers of people whose savings are invested by institutional investors.
In recent times, there has been some disquiet within certain sectors of the Singapore business community over the role of auditors in detecting corporate fraud. The cause of this…
Abstract
In recent times, there has been some disquiet within certain sectors of the Singapore business community over the role of auditors in detecting corporate fraud. The cause of this concern can perhaps be attributed partly to the Barings collapse in February 1995 and the subsequent suggestions that the auditors of the Barings subsidiary in Singapore, Barings Futures Singapore Pte Ltd (BFS), may have been negligent in their audit work. More recently, in mid‐1996, a substantial locally listed company, Amcol Holdings Ltd (Amcol), was placed under judicial management amid rumours alleging possible misdeeds by senior executives and directors. The Amcol saga has, once again, focused some attention on the role of auditors and their duty to detect fraud in company accounts.
When the time comes to look back at the last two decades of the 20th century, a future historian would be forgiven for thinking we were almost obsessed with organised crime…
Abstract
When the time comes to look back at the last two decades of the 20th century, a future historian would be forgiven for thinking we were almost obsessed with organised crime, corruption and money laundering. Of course, when one considers the ignominious fall from favour of so many world leaders, in circumstances where serious corruption was at least alleged, if not self‐evident, the exposure of rampant financial malpractice in intergovernmental organisations, the penetration of entire economic and political structures by, for what of a better notion, we describe as organised crime, then perhaps our historian's impression might not be too far from the truth. Although it is possible to find the odd comment in international meetings, about the serious implications of economic crime and the like, before the 1980s, these a few and far between. Most are related to complaints from developing countries about the unwillingness of developed countries to assist in the enforcement of exchange control laws. In fact, it was not until November 1980 that the Commonwealth, an organisation or rather association of states whose justification has increasingly been based on its ability to recognise and address problems related to small and relatively fragile economies, began to concern itself, at governmental level, with the implications of what appeared to be a growth in serious economic abuse. At the Commonwealth Law Ministers' Meeting in Barbados in that year, the ministers accepted the recommendations of a report, commissioned a year earlier by the then Director of the Commonwealth Secretariat's Legal Division, Mr Kutlu Fuad, and written by the present author, which led to the instigation of a Commonwealth programme against serious economic crime. It is interesting to note that certain Commonwealth governments had expressed concern during the 1970s not so much about abusive conduct on the part of conventional criminals, but on the part of those seeking to ‘bust’ the economic sanctions that had been imposed on Rhodesia and later South Africa. Indeed, it was claimed by some that, for example, South Africa was deliberately attempting to destabilise the economies of the ‘front‐line states’ through a programme of economic sabotage and crime. In those days, there was little talk, even in such organisations as ICPO‐Interpol, about the threat of organised crime. Terrorism, whether by individuals or by state agencies, was then considered to be a matter almost beyond the remit of traditional law enforcement agencies. It was much later that most came to recognise that organised crime and terrorist organisations may well be one and the same.