Enhancing Board Effectiveness

15Money Laundering, Tax Havens and Transparency

Any Role for the Board of Directors of Banks?

Euphemia Godspower-Akpomiemie and Kalu Ojah

1. Introduction

Among other characteristics, money laundering notably occurs across national borders and primarily through banks, mainly because banks, which are both legitimate and ‘ubiquitous’ financial services institutions, engage primarily in financial intermediation (Barry-Johnston 2005; Chaikin 2011, 2017; Tsingou 2010; Zucman 2015, and others). Therefore, as the natural logical choice of launderers of “soiled funds”, a key question implicit in this chapter is: could effective corporate governance in financial institutions, particularly banks, possibly mitigate or stop this corrupt use of formal financial ...