The received wisdom is that by decriminalising, or even legalising, drugs criminality will fall away. In California, where cannabis was legalised less than a decade* ago, that is demonstrably untrue.
In 1998, a man in England was convicted of money laundering after stealing Mars Bars and selling them to fund his purchase of a house for his girlfriend and a SAAB convertible. She was acquitted on charges of money laundering. Last week, an English court came to the same decision about the husband of a thief.
Gokul Vasudev has over 18 years of experience in providing key IT security and assurance functions. In this article he explains what zero trust is (it isn't the same as "trustless" in crypto) and why is an effective approach to addressing risks in today's digital landscape.
We hear a lot about human trafficking and, in particular, sex trafficking. We hear about the women found dead or dying with needles in their arms, often beaten, regularly diseased and we are rightly appalled. But this is the neatly packaged, western, developed country, even sanitised end of the trade. There is worse, much worse....
The decision by Thailand to permit, indeed encourage, the cultivation and use of cannabis (within constraints) puts it at odds with all of its neighbours and all other members of ASEAN. And it raises serious concerns for banks, et al.
Yesterday we looked at how we got where we are. Today we look at how we deal with where we are as money from the cultivation and trade in marijuana becomes legal in Thailand.
In 2015, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority fined Barclays Bank its then largest penalty for failings in its financial crime management obligations. Barclays had been one of the first major banks to install company-wide money laundering management software. But it doesn't help when those within the bank don't feed it the information it needs.
