Michele Riccardi is Deputy Director at Transcrime and Adjunct Professor at Università Cattolica and University of Palermo (Itlay). He has coordinated numerous research projects and publications in the field of money laundering, organised crime, and financial crime. In this domain, he has been consultant for the United Nations, the European Commission, World Bank, and the Italian government.

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Acknowledgments

List of abbreviations

Introduction

PART I: Money laundering risk measures

1. Money laundering risk and determinants
1. Money laundering (and illicit financial flows)
2. Money laundering risk
3. Determinants of money laundering risk across countries: proximity, opacity, and security
4. Available measures of money laundering risk
2. Money laundering blacklists and grey lists
1. Origin and scope of anti-money laundering blacklists
2. The FATF blacklist and grey list
3. The US INCSR list
4. The European Union anti-money laundering blacklist
5. Blacklists and sanctions
3. Other lists of high-risk countries
1. Lists based on judicial investigations
2. Lists based on media investigations: from Panama Papers to FinCEN files
3. Lists based on financial/corporate data analyses
4. Lists based on crime data analyses
5. Composite indicators
6. Lists developed by banks and other obliged entities
7. Relations and underlying components of existing risk ratings
8. Summary: the gaps in existing risk ratings and blacklists

PART II: A New measurement approach

4. A new approach to identify countries at high-risk of money laundering
1. Rationale
2. Methodology and operationalisation
3. A practical application: money laundering risk from the perspective of Italy
5. Discussion and policy implications
1. Discussion
2. Policy implications
3. Limitations and future research directions

Appendix

References

Index