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Banks Must Dig Deeper to Uncover Looted Funds, Says Private Banking Expert
printDespite public rhetoric about freezing the assets of corrupt dictators, less than three percent of the funds stolen by kleptocrats are ever returned to looted countries, according to Steffen Binder, co-founder of My Private Banking, a research and networking Web site for clients of private banks and wealth managers. The fraction of stolen funds that are frozen by financial institutions-five percent-is only incrementally larger, he said in a recent report, which looked at instances of kleptocracy over the last 20 years. The problem is due, in part, to a lack of political will by national leaders and the inability of...
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Follow the headlines and you'll find an all too common story: the political winds shift, a leader is deposed and a fortune in dirty money is uncovered in a warren of offshore accounts. But why did no one stop the plundering sooner?
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