The Failure of Anti-Money Laundering Laws

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. 

“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.”