Doing Business with Criminals: Between Exclusion and Surveillance

by Anton Moiseienko

Overview

Legitimate companies occasionally find themselves doing business with criminals, wittingly or unwittingly. Past decades have witnessed a dramatic expansion in the array of criminal law and regulatory rules that govern such entanglements. These rules raise fundamental questions about commerce and society, such as: when can someone be excluded from day-to-day commercial interactions? Where is the boundary between legitimate surveillance of suspicious transactions and financial privacy? And, ultimately, what is the point of financial crime rules: are they meant to exclude suspected criminals from the legitimate economy, or help to gather intelligence on them? This book is the first comprehensive account of how these dilemmas shape financial crime rules. Based on a sweeping overview of international experience, it tells a story that will be of interest to a wide audience ranging from the seasoned financial crime expert to the general reader.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009609838
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/31/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Anton Moiseienko is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Australian National University. He has advised governments and parliaments on financial crime in Australia, Europe and North America. His previous book is Corruption and Targeted Sanctions (Brill, 2019). He is also an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, UK.

Table of Contents

1. Business with Criminals; 2. From Stolen Cattle to Football Clubs: The History of Anti-Money Laundering; 3. Servant of Many Masters: The Objectives of Anti-Money Laundering; 4. Zero Tolerance: Terrorist Financing and Targeted Sanctions; 5. Conclusion: A Call for Recalibration.

Editorial Reviews

‘This well-written and intellectually innovative book on the controls on financial crime - money laundering, terror finance and sanctions - sets out its stall ‘to contribute to our current collective understanding of the legal and policy choices that need to be made as governments and parliaments attempt to regulate criminals’ interactions with the legitimate economy. In essence, this is an exercise in ordering and clarifying our thinking about the objectives, incentives and challenges that manifest themselves across the sprawling, increasingly complicated domain of financial crime regulation.’ It achieves this with admirable clarity, identifying the misalignment of objectives - the exclusion of criminal actors from the legitimate economy and their surveillance - and helping readers think through how to align these better with fewer unintended negative consequences. These tensions in objectives and their relationship with what public and private actors do will be around for some years yet, and I have no doubt that Doing Business with Criminals will remain a classic for years to come.’ Michael Levi, Cardiff University

‘Doing Business with Criminals shines a light on the central contradictions of the global anti-money laundering system. For those that doubt its effectiveness and seek to refocus its mission, Moiseienko's work is an indispensable guide.’ Tom Keatinge, Director, Centre for Finance & Security at RUSI

From the Publisher