The 12th Annual Anti-Money Laundering Audit and Compliance Forum

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The 12th Annual Anti-Money Laundering Audit and Compliance Forum

Institute for International Research

http://www.iirusa.com/

The 12th Annual Anti-Money Laundering Audit and Compliance Forum was co-sponsored by OffShore Alert, about which we have written previously (May 2000). The conference was particularly timely as there is a lot of preoccupation – and confusion – about both the USA Patriot act and the EU Revised Money Laundering Act of 2001.

We were very excited about the conference since we are so heavily involved in this area: In fact, the entire faculty was rather stellar, with a lot of people there either responsible for fomenting the regulations or enforcing them. Indeed, one of our editors was one of the experts on the cross-border due diligence panel (our presence on the speakers’ roster is always a good sign). In addition, there were a significant number of major financial institutions represented, both U.S.and international, with the attendees being reasonably high level.

The conference covered a wide variety of issues:

• Compliance with the recent legislation to fight money laundering.

• Minimizing exposure to money laundering risks through comprehensive anti-money laundering and employee training programs.

• Implementation of enhanced due diligence programs and know your- customer programs, as well as management of relationships with high net worth individuals, foreign political figures, and institutions.

• Key methods for identifying and reporting suspicious activities.

• Methods to detect offshore money laundering, and conducting cross-border due diligence investigations.

Between the presentations, the panels, and the ability to talk to the presenters and to the participants, if you couldn’t get specific questions answered by someone here you probably didn’t have questions to ask.

Besides discussing the Anti-Money Laundering conference, I think it is appropriate to discuss the Institute for International Research (IIR) itself. The IIR is in fact a research company rather than a conference organizer, but one that realized that among the many ways to present the fruits of their research was through conferences.

There are two of virtues to conferences over, say a book or paper. One is that you can actually ask the expert direct questions. Another is that you get to mingle with your peers and see how they approach the issues that you face. Plus you get the conference notes, so you have the book and paper, too.

IIR have been quite successful at this, and, although we have listed theirU.S.address and web site, they also have offices in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. This means that if you have an informational business need, IIR might not only have one that addresses that need, but is also geographically desirable.

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