Identifying and assessing the risks of money laundering

Dr Matt Hopkins and Nikki Shelton have, in partnership with Transcrime in Italy and VU Amsterdam in Holland, been engaged in a project that aims to develop a model for identifying and assessing the risk of money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) in European countries and to test/implement this model in three key EU member states: Italy, Netherlands and United Kingdom.

The project is funded by the European Union and based on the notion that using a ‘risk-based approach’ (RBA) to assess money laundering would be beneficial to countries required to complete national risk assessments of the problem. The final report for the project was published in 2017, though an international Identifying and Assessing the Risk of Money Laundering in Europe (IARM) conference was run in Milan in December 2016 where initial findings were presented.

For more details and to read the final report, see the IARM website.

Key publications:

Hopkins, M. & Shelton, S. (2019) Identifying Money Laundering Risk in the United Kingdom: Observations from National Risk Assessments and a Proposed Alternative Methodology. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. [Special Issue: Assessing the Risk of Money Laundering: Research Challenges and Implications for Practitioners [Edited by Ernesto Savona & Michele Riccardi].