Why We Fail to Catch Money Launderers 99.9 Percent of the Time /

Estimating the extent of money laundering and catching the perpetrators share the same difficulty: the invisibility of the crime. [...] Instead, the legislation only provides the right of access to the Director under the CBCA and shareholders and creditors of the corporation. [...] That advantage is even more pronounced in the case of international money laundering, where the predicate crime is committed in one country and the dirty money is laundered in some distant land where law enforcement officials will not even be aware of the existence of the predicate crime. [...] The advantage money launderers possess suggests that anti-money- laundering legislation should include the following key objectives: • increasing the visibility of the predicate crime and money-laundering crime; • removing the anonymity of perpetrators of the predicate crime and enablers of the money laundering crime; and • increasing the visibility of the relationship between the perpetrators of [...] That objective is obtainable through the implementation of a publicly accessible registry of beneficial ownership of corporations, business trusts and real estate, with the following key attributes: • it is internet accessible and usable by anyone for free, with no paywall; • it requires disclosure of information that maximizes the ability to connect the perpetrator of the predicate crime to the r