Introduction

The role played by legal professionals in the laundering of criminal proceeds generated by others has remained a concern for policy makers since their identification (along with accountants and other financial services providers) as ‘gatekeepers’, able to block or allow the movement of ‘dirty’ money into the legitimate financial system. An array of control measures has been put in place at global, regional and national levels to prevent legal (and other) professionals from facilitating money laundering. This chapter will consider the ‘Europeanness’ of the anti-money laundering framework for legal professionals working within countries of the European Union (EU), asking if there is a particularly European nature to this framework (that is, in comparison with the rest of the world) and whether it is experienced as such by those working in individual nation-states. The anti-money laundering framework within Europe is shaped primarily by the EU Anti-Money Laundering Directives, which are themselves shaped by global standards such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations on money laundering and terrorism financing. The EU Anti-Money Laundering Directives, therefore, create a ‘European’ anti-money laundering environment, which has both consistencies and discrepancies with other parts of the world. However, anti-money laundering policies and processes in individual nation-states will be shaped not only by the EU Directives, but also by local contexts and priorities. Therefore, how anti-money laundering is experienced by legal professionals in particular settings will depend on an interaction between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’.

The global context

The primary driver behind the global anti-money laundering (and counter-terrorism financing) regime is the FATF. The FATF was established at the 1989 G7 Summit in Paris as a one-year, 11-member taskforce with a mandate to