About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

2011 J. Prof. Law. 1 (2011)
My Brother's Keeper: An Empirical Study of Attorney Facilitation of Money Laundering through Commercial Transactions

handle is hein.journals/profeslwr2011 and id is 3 raw text is: 1 My Brother's Keeper: An Empirical Study of Attorney Facilitation of Money Laundering through Commercial Transactions Lawton P. Cummings* and Paul T. Stepnowsky** Abstract In recent years, various gatekeeping initiatives have been introduced through inter-governmental standard-setting organizations, such as the Financial Action Task Force, as well as through federal legislation in the United States, which seek to apply the mandatory customer due diligence, record keeping, and suspicious activity reporting obligations contained in the existing anti-money laundering regime to lawyers when they conduct cer- tain commercial transactions on behalf of their clients. The organized bar has argued against such attempts to regulate it, in part, due to the lack of empirical data showing that, as a threshold matter lawyers unwittingly aid money laundering in a significant number of cases. Through the analysis of a sample of money laundering cases from the Second Circuit, this article empirically examines whether lawyers are involved knowingly or unknow- ingly in transactions that serve to launder illicit funds, and it considers the implications of the study on whether lawyers should serve as gatekeepers against money laundering. * Visiting Associate Professor of Law, The University of Maryland School of Law. This paper was presented at the Fourth International Legal Ethics Conference at Stanford Law School, and at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting. Data compiled and used in the study are available upon request from the author. I would like to thank Professors Robert W. Tuttle, Thomas D. Morgan, Stephen A. Saltzburg, and Donald Braman, who provided valuable insights and comments on prior drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Dean Fred Lawrence of the George Washington University Law School for his generous research support when I was a Visiting Associate Professor of Law there, as well as my outstanding George Washington law students and fellow research assistants, Kathryn Moss, Jennifer Yeh, and Eduardo Martinez. ** J.D. 2010, The George Washington University Law School. Law Clerk to the Honor- able Roger Titus, United States District Court for the District of Maryland, commencing August 2011. I would like to thank Mark Taticchi for his helpful comments and Dana Parsons for her continued support.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most