Explores views on the costs and benefits of financial institution compliance with money laundering regulations as a precursor to a full cost benefit study. Notes that there is very little information on the costs and benefits of money laundering, which is linked with the difficulties of estimating the volume of money laundering that is occurring. Deals with attempts to measure money laundering; the problems involved in this have resulted in a system and procedure based approach which focuses on input rather than output and is clearly inferior. Looks at the costs and benefits for private compliance with money laundering regulation. Moves on to the UK’s money laundering control system, which is based on the Financial Services Authority; financial institutions have to file suspicious activity reports (SAR( and to know their customer, but it is not clear that statistics on these activities show more than the companies’ compliance. Concludes that the industry regards these duties, ie of policing the regulations on behalf of the government, as a burden, and that if this is regarded as excessive, there will be a deterrent to cooperation.

Women with genital human papillomavirus (HPV) experience considerable stress and uncertainty as a result of the diagnosis; however, little is known about the sources of uncertainty in HPV. Given that uncertainty creates stress, which might be linked to the pathogenesis of cervical cancer, research on these sources of uncertainty is warranted. To this end, we completed semistructured interviews with 25 women living with HPV, and identified seven sources of uncertainty: The meaning of the diagnosis, the potential for disease progression, finances, the source of the infection, disclosure, sex and reproduction, and the HPV vaccine. In the discussion we articulate the relevance and importance of study findings to research, theory, and practice.

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The emphasis of government legislation on money laundering has been based on the assumption that reporting institutions are able to spot deviant customer behaviour and that implicitly such behaviour is criminal. This paper looks at the drivers for reporting of suspicious or unusual activity, in particular, focusing on the principle of reputation. It considers the evidence over bank disclosure within annual published reports with respect to their money laundering compliance activity; particularly examining whether there was any change in disclosure and hence reputation management reporting by those banks fined by the regulator for lapses of compliance. An attempt is also made to apply the principles of legitimacy theory to evaluate the association between money laundering and reputation looking for evidence of a 'virtuous cycle of compliance'. However, the findings point to limited public awareness of money laundering and to the adoption of a deficit rather than enhancement model of reputation management. Imagery, rhetoric and ill-guided activismGovernmental efforts to counter money laundering are justified by the argument that they are required in order to preserve the reputation and integrity of the financial system [17]. This belief is most consistently espoused by the IMF who notes that money laundering can "harm the soundness of a country's financial sector as well as the stability of individual financial institutions" [31, p II-4]. The current approach to legislating against money laundering is justified on the grounds that it helps to make the UK less attractive to potential launderers "protecting the financial sector from operational and reputational risks" [18, Ch. 9, p. 1]. Van Duyne [35, p. 1] draws attention to the new enemies of the financial system as being those "who do not take moneys[sic] out of the financial system; but bring these into it"; the focus being very much on the potential damage inflicted by tainted money co-mingling with legitimate funds. However, if, after more than a decade of anti-money laundering Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: jackie.harvey@northumbria.ac.uk legislation the threat rhetoric pervades, then surely financial systems, as pointed out by van Duyne et al. [34], should be on the point of collapse from the effect of so much cross-contamination. The authors also argue convincingly that past bank losses have resulted from operational risk rather than an exclusive influx of crime-money and suggest that arguments over integrity and reputation should be seen as "mere rhetoric". They go on to suggest that integrity is important not from the point of view of the source of the funds but because of the trust bestowed in the bank by its customers that it will properly handle their funds irrespective of whether they are criminal or of honest intent [15]. Reuter and Truman [28, p. 60] make the valid observation that "Banks... are quasi-public utilities, and the public does not want them to be directly involved in handling d...

Considers evidence of the costs and benefits of money laundering compliance activity within the UK, in light of the fact that despite the UK’s particularly assiduous compliance, it remains on the list of identified money laundering countries. Outlines the evidence for the existence of money laundering in the UK: £25 billion is a possibly realistic figure for the amount actually laundered, a figure which is less than 1% of total funds handled by the financial system, although some funds appear to be going into property and other avenues which avoid the banking system. Compares the likely costs and benefits of regulation compliance, which is notoriously difficult. Concludes that the costs of compliance are not negligible, and that there is a need to understand more clearly both the objectives of legislation and the amount of money laundering activity taking place.