Jake's View | Hong Kong dances to the money laundering tune
Draconian laws allow our authorities to convict supposed launderers without evidence of a crime – and all to please a European agency
The [Financial Action] Task Force recognised Hong Kong's efforts and agreed unanimously among members in October 2012 to remove Hong Kong from its "follow-up process" in its regular mutual evaluation.
Successful conviction of recent cases shows our determination and efficacy among law enforcement agencies and financial regulators in combating money laundering.
Let us set this in proper perspective as what we have here is actually a story of rank injustice inflicted on innocent members of the public by craven bureaucrats pandering to a European watchdog of capital flows.
That watchdog, the Paris-based FATF, an intergovernmental agency set up in 1989 to police money laundering, baldly confesses on its own website to setting itself above its masters - "The FATF … works to generate the necessary political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reform …"
In other words, "No, you national governments, even you mere voting members of the general public, shall not tell us what to do. We shall tell you. Shut up and listen."