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Professional enablers of illicit financial flows and high-risk service and jurisdictions

Professional enablers from non-financial entities have been at the centre of several international corruption and money laundering scandals. They play a key role in facilitating illicit financial flows (IFFs) by lending their expertise and credibility to criminals. Not only do they launder dirty money, but they also make it harder for law enforcement officials to identify them and recover stolen assets. Clean money can be reinvested in the criminal enterprise or spent for the personal benefit of criminals. Experts and policymakers have turned to a services-based approach to develop more holistic strategies to engage professionals who provide these high-risk services and mitigate said risks. It is possible to identify high-risk jurisdictions for specific services, such as company formation, tax advisory and real estate transactions, by analysing national risk assessment, by understanding where they are more frequently offered and where measures to address these risks have not been successfully adopted or implemented.

14 August 2021
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Professional enablers of illicit financial flows and high-risk service and jurisdictions

Main points

  • Professional enablers from non-financial sectors play a key role in facilitating global illicit financial flows, laundering proceeds from corruption, tax evasion and organized crime.
  • A services or activities-based approach allows for better intelligence collection and more efficient supervision.
  • It is possible to identify high-risk jurisdictions for specific services by analyzing where they are more frequently offered and where measures to mitigate these risks are more fragile.
  • A number of activities and services provided by professional enablers are considered high-risk, including company formation, tax advisory, real estate transactions and trade of high-value goods, precious metals, and stones.

Cite this publication


France, G.; (2021) Professional enablers of illicit financial flows and high-risk service and jurisdictions. Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer 2021:16)

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Guilherme France

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All views in this text are the author(s)’, and may differ from the U4 partner agencies’ policies.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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