Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

What Wealth of Expertise ?

Further to my last article about the FATF Annual Report 2006-2007 that was published last 20 December, I would like to demonstrate to what extend the "generous gift" received by the FATF from Luxembourg is a threat for the financial community worldwide.

The affair is worrying as the FATF is publicly satisfied of the "generous gift".

BUT

We are exactly in the situation of a judge receiving with public satisfaction a "generous gift" from a litigant he/she is gonna judge.
We are exactly in the situation of a bank receiving with public satisfaction a "generous gift" from a client it is gonna assess in the framework of AML procedures.
We are exactly in the situation of an auditor receiving with public satisfaction a "generous gift" from a client he/she is gonna audit.

The list of examples is not exhaustive.


By accepting, the judge or the bank or the auditor would definitely compromise their ability to address issues freely, thoroughly and objectively (TI words). Additionaly, in many companies such "generous gifts" to employees are a reason for dismissal.

Like every financial center, Luxembourg does not like comments from abroad on the dysfunctions. Financial centers do not like comments on their internal affairs. I can understand such point of view provided that dysfunctions are actually corrected internally.

But because of local corruption and the fear to lose contracts or jobs, dysfunctions are either denied or hushed up and therefore there cannot be corrective actions. This is what I have demonstrated in many articles in this blog and the small size emphasizes the impact of dysfunctions.

What I have been trying to explain since 2004 with a project of research on ethics and CSR and many articles among other things. Unfortunately everyone decided to blame the messenger that wanted to change the risky behaviors for the sake of the center.


What's new is that with its "generous gift" Luxembourg has now exported its lax behaviour to the international bodies that are supposed to control fraud, money laundering and ... corruption.

We are no longer in internal affairs.

We are now in an international concern for the OECD, the IMF, Transparency International, the IFAC, the PCAOB, the GRECO : it is up to them to do their duty in 2008.