Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation
For Immediate Release
Monday, February 22, 2010
202-285-0244
www.freedomandprosperity.org
The Failure of Anti-Money Laundering Laws:
Current System Is Costly and Misallocates Law Enforcement Resources According to New CF&P Video
(Washington, D.C., February 22, 2010) A new video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P) discusses how anti-money laundering laws, which require banks to snoop on their customers, are costly and ineffective.
Entitled “Making Banks Spy on Their Customers is Not Effective Crime Fighting: The Failure of Anti-Money Laundering Laws,” the mini-documentary explains that these laws impose heavy costs on the financial industry. These costs might be worthwhile if they passed a cost-benefit test. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that anti-money laundering laws decrease crime.
Links to the video: YouTube | Yahoo | Capitol Hub
“Anti-money laundering laws result in millions of reports on innocent bank customers and genuine hardship for many people who are improperly treated as potential criminals,” said CF&P Foundation President Andrew Quinlan.
“Anti-money laundering laws create a haystack of financial information, so it is nearly impossible for law enforcement officials to find needles of criminal activity,” said Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute. “The time has come for a dramatic reassessment of these laws so that resources can be allocated where they will best fulfill the legitimate government function of protecting life, liberty and property.”
Executive summary:
This Center for Freedom and Prosperity video examines anti-money laundering laws and finds that they are expensive and intrusive. These costs might be acceptable if the result was less crime, but this mini-documentary reveals that anti-money laundering policies are ineffective. As a former Reagan Administration official remarked, they undermine the fight against crime by misallocating law enforcement resources.
The following are the links to other CF&P Foundation videos including Tax Competition Primer, VAT-Hidden Tax, Global Flat Tax Revolution, Cutting the U.S. Corporate Income Tax, Promoting Prosperity, Obama’s So-Called Stimulus, Stimulus II, Obama’s Deferral Proposal, Case Against Class-Warfare Tax Policy, President Obama’s Dishonest Demagoguery on Tax Havens, a three part series on the Benefits of Tax Havens and a another three-part series on the Laffer Curve.
Link: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/videos/videos.shtml
Web Links:
Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mUdDBYeg_g
Yahoo
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/7023220/18263745
For additional comments:
Andrew Quinlan can be reached at 202-285-0244, andy@freedomandprosperity.org
Dan Mitchell can be reached at 202-218-4615, dmitchell@cato.org
###
