The UNODC works hard, ceaselessly, not entirely tirelessly, to combat a wide range of serious offences that not only harm economies but put lives at risk. They run campaigns. Today, as "Anti Corruption Day" dawns, one has to ask why they bother.

Within the past couple of days, a report from the Financial Action Task Force, who one would think knows about money laundering risk management and related topics, talks about "hawalas.

The news that Standard Chartered is to be permitted, by China, to trade in yuan / remimbi in the UK has been greeted with surprise and, even concern and consternation by some.

Google flatters me.

Apparently I have a Google + account. I assume some marketing person somewhere, sometime, somehow set it up. I don't remember anything about it. Nor, incidentally, do I remember actually posting anything to it.

Anyway, in the way of marketing messages, that nebulous body (are they in "the cloud"?) "The Google+ (oh, no space before the + sign?) has sent me what passes for a personalised e-mail (I know it's not because it starts "Dear" and has my full name).

It's the most basic of tests for IT people: can they make the machine they are working on produce the words "Hello World!" on the monitor or a printer?

And so, as today is the first day of the rest of the life of this website, which was the first website we built even before we owned the domain name, it's fitting that the first words on this blog should be that test.

So, it's not the first time we've said "Hello World!" That's why we're saying it again.

The US Presidential campaign, 2012, is winding up.

It says a lot about how we, as people, make decisions.

The US presidential campaign comes to an end with an interesting revelation: the US people are being asked which of two liars they trust least – and to vote for the other one.

The financial services industry is getting only part of the risk management and anti-money laundering point. And modern business models in banking and insurance militate against effective know-your- customer procedures says Nigel Morris-Cotterill .

World-wide, regulators are including in the requirements they place on affected businesses demands that they build a profile of their customers.

This “know your customer” approach is vital in the attempts to detect and deter money laundering and terrorist financing.

The invasion of Ukraine has raised some serious questions about the Russian arms trade and the imposition of sanctions is only a part of the issue.

It amazes me how many people still talk about "cybercrime" and get excited like a dog with a new bone. Here, I debunk the common way of thinking because I like things to be very, very clear and misleading terms mitigate against that. In addition there's news about Clarity and in-house face to face training for law enforcement, judges and regulators.

Failure to Prevent" laws are not new and nor is the concept behind them. But they are increasingly important for Financial Crime Risk and Compliance Officers and Internal Auditors.

To explain the concepts in the "Failure to Prevent" series of Financial Crime Fora, Nigel Morris-Cotterill will present a one-hour talk on Tuesday 25th April, 2023.