Governing Money Laundering as a Collective-Action Problem: The European Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA)

Since the introduction of the global anti-money laundering (AML) regime, the focus of (inter)national concern has broadened, from the laundering of the proceeds of drug trafficking and other organised crimes to a range of crime and security issues captured by the term ‘illicit finance’. These include money laundering, terrorism financing, proliferation financing, tax evasion, corruption, kleptocracy and sanctions evasion. This article considers how this shift from ‘money laundering’ to ‘illicit finance’ has changed the nature of the ‘AML’ regime for legal professionals in the UK, and what lessons this holds for Australia amidst ongoing regulatory reform. It argues that legislation enacted in the UK since 2017, encompassing key themes of transparency and financial sanctions, has expanded the ‘gatekeeper’ role of legal professionals, creating further opportunities to prevent or enable illicit finance and further regulatory obligations (and potential exposure to criminal sanctions). A reformed Australian AML/CTF regime should aim to address all relevant crime and security threats and the various ways that individual actors, systemic factors and regulatory gaps within professional service provision can enable illicit finance. However, it must also recognise and manage the implications of ever-expanding regulatory obligations, and the compliance challenges these obligations can create.

This article, prepared for an issue devoted to the work of Judge Richard A. Posner, considers the implications of law and economics for the structure of supranational organizations, with particular attention to the application of collective action theory to the relationships among states in the EU. After discussing the connections between this approach and Judge Posner’s work, the article describes collective action theory and its implications for our understanding of the state and of relationships among states. From this perspective, supranational organizations such as the EU can be understood as institutional structures that facilitate collective action among states by reducing the transactions and enforcement costs of making and implementing collective decisions. At the same time, the delegation of authority to supranational institutions creates agency costs for states and their peoples because the interests of the state and its people diverge from the interests of the collective in some instances. Viewed in this perspective, the institutional structure of the EU—like that of other supranational organizations or federal nation states—reflects an effort to strike a balance between collective decision making and local control so as to maximize the collective gains and minimize the resulting agency costs. Understood in these terms, various features of the EU’s institutional design make sense. The ordinary legislative process permits the EU to act without the unanimous consent of member states, thus reducing transactions costs in those areas where collective action is necessary, particularly in relation to the creation and regulation of the internal market. The EU reduces enforcement costs through principles of direct applicability or effects and the supremacy of EU law, which are effective legal restraints in states governed by the rule of law. The institutional structure of the EU also incorporates a representative and deliberative process for collective action that helps control the resulting agency costs for member states and their peoples through supermajority and co-decisional requirements. The collective action perspective also illuminates the function of the subsidiarity principle and the enhanced role of national parliaments in its enforcement.

Residential buildings under co-ownership are properties governed by mixed systems of communal and individual property rights. Their management demands a high level of organized cooperation and coordination among them. However, owners’ collective actions are never straightforward owing to their temptation to free ride. Without owners’ collective actions, management works can be delayed or even cancelled, which results in deteriorating building conditions. With the increasing number of people living in co-owned residential buildings, whether they can overcome collective action problems and effectively manage their properties becomes important to long-term management of building stocks. Therefore, this study aims to assess management performance of co-owned residential buildings and to explore the variations of the management performance from a collective action perspective.
\nA rigorous tool for assessing management performance of co-owned residential buildings was developed in this study. The tool consisted of a hierarchy of key performance indicators which evaluate the capability of an owners’ group to make collective decisions, enforce management rules, and monitor its buildings’ condition. The application of the tool on a co-owned residential building generates a performance profile representing its management performance. The proposed tool was used to assess the management performance of 74 sampled buildings in Hong Kong. The survey data was collected from the sampled buildings through desk studies, face-to-face interviews, questionnaires by post, and on- site inspections. 
\nMultiple regression analyses were applied to investigate the effects of the exogenous factors on building management performance. The empirical results showed that large-size owners groups were more likely to perform well in managing their properties. Homogeneous owners groups were associated with a greater likelihood to achieve high management performance. More importantly, the empirical results revealed that the owners group of a co-owned residential building were more likely obtain high performance in managing the communal properties under the following circumstances: 1) well-defined boundaries of the communal properties; 2) a fair distribution of their rights and responsibilities to management; 3) a presence of effective mechanism to regulate their use of the communal properties; and 4) a way to rapidly resolve their disputes over management. 
\nThe major contribution of this study is to the field of building management. The proposed tool in this study can used by owners, property managers, investors, and policy-makers to access to management information on co-owned residential buildings, which helps them make better decisions on buildings. In addition, findings of this study provided an explanation of the variations in building management performance, which has great implications for government policies that aim to encourage owners to cooperate in management of their properties.

In the last 5 years, the European institutional architecture of banking regulation and supervision has undergone sweeping changes, brought about by a number of sequential legislative initiatives. Such a ‘Copernican revolution’ naturally calls for investigating whether and how these different layers of reforms add up to (or can be interpreted in a way that ensures) an overall consistent, efficient and effective design for banking regulation and supervision. This is particularly the case for the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the Banking Union (BU), two new institutional players which in the public debate are sometimes dubbed as overlapping or even conflicting. This paper provides a critical analysis of this interplay and its components, also with the aim to provide food for thought for further exploration, from a private as well as a public law perspective. It starts from the reasons behind the foundation of the EBA and the BU, showing how these two new institutional players in fact were created to pursue two distinct and complementary goals and operate on two separate but interconnected institutional levels. The paper then dwells on the panoply of innovative regulatory tools which the EBA can deploy in order to accomplish its mission to foster maximum harmonisation and the creation of a single set of common rules (the ‘Single Rulebook’ or SR): technical standards, guidelines and recommendations, and other ‘soft law’ instruments, such as the QA (ii) provide more certainty on the scope and possible effects of the EBA’s mediation role; and (iii) rethink the governance of the EBA, if there is to be a more balanced interplay between national and European drivers.

Brühl, V.: How Will the Digital Euro Work? A Preliminary Analysis of Design, Structures and Challenges, SSRN, 2025. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5233396, accessed: December 16th, 2024 Herrera, L. A.: PSD3 and the Regulation on Payment Services in the Context of Crypto Assets, in: Governance and Control of Data and Digital Assets in European Private Law, Springer, 2025, pp. 371–386. Available at: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/96997/9783031748899.pdf?sequence=1#page=371, accessed: March 2nd, 2025. Malovaná, S., et al.: Instant Payments in Czechia: Adoption and Future Trends, CNB Working Paper, 2025. Available at: https://www.cnb.cz/export/sites/cnb/en/economic-research/.galleries/research_publications/cnb_wp/cnbwp_2025_04.pdf, accessed: March 2nd, 2025. Radanović, I.: Features and Prospects of Cross-border Linking of Instant Payment Systems, NBS Bulletin, 2025. Available at: https://www.nbs.rs/export/sites/NBS_site/documents-eng/publikacije/wp_bulletin/wp_bulletin_03_25_3.pdf, accessed: March 2nd, 2025. Van Praag, E.: European Payments: Faster, Cheaper, More Digital and More European, but Leave No One Behind, SSRN, 2024. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4920419, accessed: December 16th, 2024 Zatti, F., Barresi, R. G.: The Digital Euro Package: From Legal Tender to Payment Services Providers, in: Governance and Control of Data and Digital Assets in European Private Law, Springer, 2025, pp. 348–370. Available at: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/96997/9783031748899.pdf?sequence=1#page=348, accessed: March 2nd, 2025. Directive (EU) 2015/2366 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on payment services in the internal market (PSD2). Regulation (EU) 2024/886 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 March 2024 as regards instant credit transfers in euro (Instant Payments Regulation, IPR). Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2012 (SEPA End Date Regulation). Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389 of 27 November 2017 supplementing Directive (EU) 2015/2366 of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to regulatory technical standards for strong customer authentication and common and secure open standards of communication (SCA-RTS). Official source: EUR-Lex: Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX: 32018R0389, accessed: December 16th, 2024 European Banking Authority (2019), Single Rulebook Q&A, Available at: https://www.eba.europa.eu/single-rule-book-qa/qna/view/publicId/2018_4435, accessed: March 2nd, 2025. European Banking Authority (2024), Q&As on IPR implementation, Available at: https://finance.ec.europa.eu/document/download/f597b1a5-2a7b-481d-882c-80fb1c5cc3d5_en?filename=instant-payments-implementation-questions-answers_en.pdf, accessed: March 2nd, 2025.

The topic of social capital has been gaining many concerns from social researchers throughout the world, especially in collective action perspective. This study aimed to describe the organizational activities of the local forest management practices ( parak and rimbo ) as a social capital in collective action perspective. The research method is a case study of Koto Malintang and Simancuang people in West Sumatra. Collecting data was conducted by unstructured interviews, field observations, and document studies. Data analysis uses categorization and coding, document analysis, and historical analysis. Our findings were described in the context of decision-making, resources management and mobilization, communication, and conflict resolution. Collective action for decision-making involved the acquisition, allocation, and distribution mechanisms to divide land and forest product among local people. In the context of resources management and mobilization, they applied kinship relations among families, sub-clans, and clans to manage their resources. They then communicated their needs in any formal and informal meetings. When a conflict occurred in related to forest utilization, they applied an adat court to make a win-win solution. Nevertheless, the challenges of collective action are still about the resources availability, benefit equity, and external supports

This essay examines the relation between Carl Menger's and John R. Commons' approaches to institutional analysis. It draws attention to certain aspects of their respective approaches which are of systematic relevance to the ongoing debate on the direction into which an adequate economic theory of institutions ought to be developed. It is argued that – contrary to a common perception – Menger's and Commons' concepts of institutions represent compatibleand complementaryrather than conflicting, alternative theoretical perspectives. It is suggested that the explanatory power of an economics of institutions can be enriched by incorporating both perspectives; Commons' collective action perspective as well as Menger's evolutionary perspective. Law, language, the state, money, markets, all these social structures …are to no small extent the unintended result of social development, The prices of goods, interest rates, ground rents, wages, and a thousand other phenomena of social life in general and of economy in particular exhibit the same peculiarity. Also, understanding of them …must be analogous to the understanding of unintentionally created social institutions. …For they, too, as a rule are not the result of socially teleological causes, but the unintended result of innumerable efforts of economic subjects pursuing individualinterests (Carl Menger, 1985: 147, 158). Collective action, as well as individual action, has always been there; but from Smith to the Twentieth Century it has been excluded or ignored, except as attacks on trade unions or as postscripts on ethics or plublic policy. The problem now is not to create a different kind of economics - ‘institutional’ economics - divorced from preceding schools, but how to give to collective action, in all its varieties, its due place throughout economic theory (John R. Commons, 1934:5).

Banks and other financial institutions handle sensitive records regarding people, trusts, and corporations. Money, as a sensitive and useful commodity, makes financial organizations valuable and prone to criminal elements. Common criminal activities that target the banking sector include money laundering, identity and personal records theft, and terrorism financing. These are global issues that have garnered the attention of international bodies and governments. One method proposed to deal with illicit finance and money laundering is artificial intelligence (AI). AI implements various algorithms and techniques to monitor customers, markets, and financial transactions that help identify various banking habits. Understanding clients’ transactions and the nature of bank transfers enables AI to prevent and combat money laundering. This research offers an understanding of how artificial intelligence is used in the financial system to combat fraudulent activities such as money laundering. It is organized into five chapters covering various aspects of artificial intelligence and money laundering.

Reducing Operational Drift: A Governance Framework for AML Effectiveness in U.S. Financial Institutions

Abstract: This article examines whether and how the moral principle of legal coherence or integrity, which has recently been developed further as a response to disagreement in the national legal context, applies to European law. According to the European integrity principle, all national and European authorities should make sure their decisions cohere with the past decisions of other European and national authorities that create and implement the law of a complex but single European legal order. Only by doing so, it is argued, can the European political and legal community gain true authority and legitimacy in the eyes of the European citizens to whom all these decisions apply. Although European integrity is primarily a product of European integration, it has gradually become one of the requirements of further integration. The article suggests that the principle of European integrity would help dealing with the growing pressure for common European solutions under conditions of increasing diversity. It places disagreement at the centre of European politics, as both an incentive and a means of integration by way of comparison and self‐reflectivity. It constitutes therefore the ideal instrument for a pluralist and flexible further constitutionalisation of the European Union.

Sustainable management of nature-based tourism sites is a pertinent issue in vulnerable Arctic environments. Arctic tourism operators often act collectively to protect their common interests of ensuring the sustainability of tourism sites. Nowadays, information and communication technology (ICT) is increasingly used to support these collaborative efforts, but the remoteness and risks associated with Arctic tourism operations challenge the success of such collective action. This study explores the use of ICT as a management tool for Arctic tourism sites to ensure their sustained quality. Drawing on a case study of an expedition cruise operators’ network in Svalbard, we explore how the use of ICT affects collective action and sustainable management of tourism sites. Our findings show that, through increased noticeability, the creation of artificial proximity and the development of new management practices, ICT can help to overcome the challenges for collective action that are posed by the Arctic environment. The use of ICT results in changes in a network’s relational and normative structures, which can as much add to as detract from the success of collective action. Our study indicates that the successful application of ICT depends on a high level of social capital, in particular norms, to guide interactions between ICT and network actors.

From the chemical input-intensive yield-enhancement practices of the Green Revolution era, agricultural research and development focus is gradually shifting towards establishing Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) in fruits and vegetable sector. The dominant problems affecting fruits and vegetables in terms of safety is presence of pesticide residues. Globally, authorities have long highlighted this risk and imposed appropriate maximal limits of residues (MLRs). In spite of imposing MLRs in fresh vegetables, negative health effects of pesticides residue in consumers have been increasingly reported from states of India like Kerala. Along with other factors, food quality and safety declination resulting from inappropriate chemicals and pesticide use during crop production is widely documented as one of the root-causes of the health issues. The weak quality assurance schemes in developing countries impede smallholders’ inclusion in high value chains due to imperfect institutional and governance arrangements throughout the system. Apparently, erstwhile studies have emphasized the significance of collective action among smallholders as a solution to the above constraints. However, past studies on vegetable production in India are either from a horticultural and entomological perspective on increasing production and productivity, pest management or on cost of cultivation and those solely from an econometric, institutional and collective action perspective have been hardly studied. Still lesser are studies understanding the inter-linkages between smallholders’ collective action and pesticides risk reduction in vegetable production of India. In this backdrop, the current study examines various econometric models and suggests suitable models to assess the institutional mechanisms on improving environmental and economic performance of vegetable production in India under collective action.

The implications of Brexit for UK anti-money laundering regulations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review recent examples of sophisticated money laundering operations involving financial institutions in Eurasia, including Russia and Moldova, and the resulting flow of licit and illicit capital from that part of the world to the UK, the USA, and other Western countries.Design/methodology/approachRelying on materials from publicly available sources, the study uses several case studies to illustrate various money laundering methods with a view toward identifying common elements and aspects of the schemes that might be considered new or innovative.FindingsIn particular, the study examines the roles that lax anti-money laundering compliance by financial institutions and the use of shell corporations designed to conceal the beneficial ownership of the companies and their assets have played in virtually all of the money laundering schemes.Originality/valueThe paper discusses the risks that these emerging money laundering methods pose to Western countries and their financial institutions and the approaches that governments might take to minimize those risks and raise the barriers for the laundering of illicit funds within their jurisdictions.

As the global economy undergoes rapid digital transformation, cryptocurrencies have emerged as a prominent alternative class of financial assets. Their decentralized nature, pseudonymity, and lack of centralized oversight have attracted considerable interest among investors while simultaneously raising significant concerns among regulators and compliance professionals. While cryptocurrencies offer benefits such as enhanced accessibility and transactional privacy, they also pose notable risks, particularly their potential misuse in financial crimes, including money laundering. This study explores the perceived risks associated with cryptocurrencies in the context of money laundering, drawing on insights from a survey conducted among 50 financial sector professionals. A quantitative research design was employed, using a structured online questionnaire to assess participants’ awareness, investment behavior, and perceptions of the role of cryptocurrencies in illicit finance and financial system security. The results reveal a complex perspective: while 70% of respondents acknowledged the potential for cryptocurrencies to facilitate money laundering, 60% expressed support for their wider adoption. Notably, statistically significant correlations emerged between active investment in cryptocurrencies and the belief that they could enhance financial market security and reduce laundering risks. However, self-reported knowledge levels and general awareness did not show a significant relationship with perceived risk. The findings underscore the importance of a balanced approach to regulation, one that fosters innovation while mitigating illicit finance risks. The study recommends increased investment in user education, the development of blockchain analytics, the adoption of global regulatory standards and enhanced international cooperation to ensure the responsible evolution of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.