1st Edition
Illicit Finance and the Law in the Commonwealth Caribbean The Myth of Paradise
This book provokes fresh ways of thinking about small developing States within the transnational legal order for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism and proliferation (TAMLO).
From the global wars on drugs and terror to journalistic exposés such as the ‘Paradise’, ‘Panama’ and ‘Pandora’ Papers, the Commonwealth Caribbean has been discursively stigmatised as a mythical island paradise of ‘rogue’ States. Not infrequently, their exercise of regulatory self-determination has been presented as the selling of their economic sovereignty to facilitate shady business deals and illicit finance from high-net-worth individuals, kleptocrats, tax-dodgers, organised crime networks and terrorist financiers. This book challenges conventional wisdom that Commonwealth Caribbean States are among the ‘weakest links’ within the global ecosystem to counter illicit finance. It achieves this by unmasking latent interests, and problematising coercive extraterritorial regulatory and surveillance practices, along the onshore/offshore and Global North/South axes.
Interdisciplinary in its outlook, the book will appeal to policymakers, regulatory and supervisory authorities, academics and students concerned with better understanding legal and development policy issues related to risk-based regulatory governance of illicit finance. The book also provides an interesting exposition of substantive legal and policy issues arising from money laundering related to corruption and politically exposed persons, offshore finance, and offshore Internet gambling services.
1. Introduction to the Commonwealth Caribbean in transnational legal and policy discourses on illicit finance 2. Illicit finance and its regulation in the Commonwealth Caribbean: A vulnerability assessment 3. Deconstructing the transnational anti-money laundering legal order: The onslaught on Caribbean States’ sovereignty 4. Politically exposed persons (PEPs) and the laundering of ‘suspect wealth’ 5. Criminalising licit finance: Extraterritorial regulation of the Caribbean’s offshore Internet gambling sector 6. Rethinking the FATF Risk-Based Approach: Towards a framework of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’? 7. Conclusion
Biography
Rohan D. Clarke is an international consultant on illicit finance, a Jamaican diplomat and Fellow at Yale University’s Global Justice Programme, USA.
"Illicit Finance and the Law in the Commonwealth Caribbean is an impressive pathbreaking guide to the developmental experience of small states within global legal efforts to combat illicit finance. It masterfully marries theoretical innovation and empirical rigour. I recommend it to scholars and students alike." Jeremy Green, University of Cambridge.
"Illicit Finance and the Law in the Commonwealth Caribbean is impressive in its scope, interdisciplinary reach, and mastery of the scholarly literature on economic crimes. It will undoubtedly become the leading authority for practitioners and academics." Professor Mads Andenas QC, Barrister, Brick Court Chambers, former UN President-Rapporteur on Arbitrary Detention.
