PARIS, JUNE 22: Some of the world's most exotic isles and other "offshore" banking meccas faced a public "outing" on Thursday from the agency coordinating international attempts to combat money-laundering.The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the body leading an international campaign against money laundering has named Russia, Liechtenstein, Israel, Lebanon and a string of banking meccas on Thursday, in a blacklist of "uncooperative" financial centres.The FATF created in 1989 by the Group of Seven economic powers, also named the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Dominica, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Panama, the Philippines, St-Kitts Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as key links in an international network for money laundering.Around $600 billion from drug cartels, mafia barons or other criminal or shady sources is believed to be recycled through banks and other investment institutions each year, roughly as much as the output of the entire Canadian economy.The FATF said these banking centres are not doing enough to prevent their banks recycling hundreds of billions of dollars in hot money. Some $600 billion from drug cartels, mafia barons or other criminal outfits are believed to pass through banks each year - close to the value of the entire Canadian economy, which is the world's seventh biggest.Officials at the Paris-based FATF had remained silent for over three days of negotiations this week before issuing the blacklist in the hope that threats of a very public reprimand will win last-minute concessions from some of the recalcitrants.After more than a decade of attempts to cajole governments into tougher financial and legal supervision, however, they said the time had come to start naming names for the first time.One of the centres, the tiny European principality of Liechtenstein, is already fighting bad publicity triggered by a wave of high-profile bank raids and arrests by investigators on the trail of Russian mafia and Colombian drug cartel funds.Last week, the FATF said it was satisfied with concessions from Austria on modification of bank-secrecy rules and that it would not follow up on a threat of public blame.The FATF blacklist comes on the heels of one from another government-sponsored forum last month which brought protests from the Dutch Antilles and Switzerland over their inclusion. The list released on May 25 by the Basle-based Financial Stability Forum, another G7 body working on issues similar to those of the FATF, prompted Malta to declare that it was withdrawing from a grouping of offshore bankers.Switzerland was listed too - albeit in the lowest rank of the three-tier league table - along with other major financial centres such as Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dublin and the British-controlled Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey islands.The top of that offender list comprised mainly exotic places such as Belize, the Virgin Islands and the Seychelles, along with Liechtenstein, a tiny landlocked European principality.The French-linked principality of Monaco, which was ranked close behind the top group, is also caught up in another blaze of bad publicity after a damning French parliamentary report on Wednesday that also accused France itself of not reacting.
