Taking Stock of the Global Fight Against Illicit Financial Flows

Financial globalization has produced a world of large-scale cross-border flows of capital. Among those rivers of beneficial finance are concealed substantial streams of dirty money, money linked to illegal activities, from drug trafficking and terrorism to corruption and tax evasion. The networks that sustain these flows may originate with those committing predicate crimes, but they extend to financial institutions, corporate service providers, and a host of other complicit intermediaries. Dismantling this web of illicit financial flows (IFFs) has become an international priority in recent decades, at first because of a demand to combat the associated crimes but also out of recognition that IFFs undermine good governance and rule of law, hinder economic development, threaten financial stability, and reduce international security. The importance of curbing IFFs was confirmed in Goal 16 of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.