Commentary On The Legal Obligations Of Anti-money Laundering Of Banking Industry

Under the current situation of economic globalization and capital internationalization, money laundering has constituted a great threat to the stability and safety of international financial system. Money-laundering is a kind of activity and process to hide the criminal profit and camouflage to make it legal. As the criminal profit is usually called "dirty money" and "black money", the activity of cleaning criminal profit and make it legal generally comes to be called money-laundering. Money-laundering is the total address of all kinds of criminal activities of hiding or disguising the criminal profit. Of course, this concept is not unchangeable, after "9·11" incident, in order to intensify efforts to attack terrorism, the process of use legitimate funds for terrorist activities is also called money-laundering. Thus, there are two kinds of meaning of money-laundering, one is to make the criminal money legal, the other is to use legitimate funds for terrorist activities. The money laundering in this paper is referred to all the behaviors of cleaning criminal profit. The convenient services provided by banks' payment and settlement systems and the constant innovation of financial derivative products have made banking industry the main flowing channel of social capital and the important channel of money laundering.Anti-money laundering is linked to the concept and scope of money laundering. Anti-money laundering generally refers to "The government use legislative and judicial power and mobilize the organizations and the business sectors concerned to identify the potential money launderers, and dispose the money concerned, and punish relevant agencies and staff , so as to prevent criminal activities systematically". In different historical periods, anti-money laundering has different emphases. Today, "anti-corruption money laundering" and " anti-terrorist financing" become two important elements of the world's anti-money laundering action. Banking industry becomes the core of anti-money laundering for its special status in the course of funds circulation, so making clear the banking industry's legal obligations of anti-money laundering has become a key to anti-money laundering.The orientation of banking industry's social role requires it to undertake the socialresponsibilities of anti- money laundering , and international financial competitionrequires banking industry to establish perfect legal rules of anti- money laundering andto has the convenient facilities of anti- money laundering itself. With the promotion ofthe main development states and international organizations, the consensus has been achieved on anti- money laundering in international society. Anti- money laundering legislation and activities have been undertaken mainly around financial institutions and leaded by banking industry. Since the middle of 1990's, Chinese legislation authority has began to pay attention to money laundering. Now China has established anti-money laundering system of banking industry initiatively and stipulated explicitly the obligations of anti- money laundering of banking industry, namely : to establish a sound anti-money laundering system of internal control, to build customer identification system, to establish customer information preservation system, to implement the large and suspicious transactions reporting system.Because our country just established the banking industry's anti- money laundering system, the banking industry's anti-money laundering legal system has many deficiencies and gaps in comparison with developed states, and the main features are: the complete set of "Anti-Money Laundering Act" in China is not perfect yet, the lack of advanced anti-money laundering measures in the internal part of banking industry, the lack of perfect restraint-incentive mechanism, the weak awareness of anti-money laundering of its staff, the weak implementation of anti-money laundering system of banks in practice. Therefore, our country's banking industry anti-money laundering legal system needs to be improved so as to protect banks to effectively perform their legal obligations of anti-money laundering. Combined with our national conditions, we should create a good legal environment for anti-money-laundering; and raise banks' legal awareness of anti-money laundering, and further to improve the complementary rules and regulations of "Anti-Money Laundering Act"; and establish and perfect bound-incentive mechanism; and strengthening the international exchanges and cooperation; and play gradually the role of self-regulation of Banking Association oriented with government appropriate regulation; and establish a sound anti-money laundering training system for banking staff.