Efforts to beat money laundering 'flawed'

Telegraph | Money | Efforts to beat money laundering 'flawed':

By Andrew Cave

Government measures aimed at tackling money laundering suffer from 'serious design problems', according to a report from the European Policy Forum.

The report, Policing of Financial Transactions, by the forum's president, Graham Mather, assesses the impact of the 'dragnet technique' used by regulators since the September 11 attacks brought new urgency to the issue of how terrorism is funded.

Citing a backlog of 58,000 suspicious activity reports in Britain in May, he says there can be 'little confidence' that the system could cope with the 100,000 such reports expected this year or the 150,000 expected in 2004.

He adds: 'The evidence gives grounds for serious concern that current anti money laundering initiatives are not working as well as could be hoped.'"