On 9 September this year, Dr Ingrida Kerušauskaitė-Palmer, Senior Researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (LCSS), participated in the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference held at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. The ECPR General Conference is Europe’s largest annual gathering of political scientists, bringing together thousands of scholars and practitioners to present the latest research and promoting the translation of research insights into practical solutions.
At the conference, the Law Institute researcher delivered a presentation entitled “Enablers of Illicit Finance: a Conceptual Framework”, in which she presented research conducted jointly with Dr Omar McDoom, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the article based on this research. In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to enablers of corruption and financial crime in public discourse, policy-making, and scholarly discussions. Major exposes such as the Panama Papers, Pandora Papers, and FinCEN Files have highlighted the role that individuals and firms play in facilitating the movement of funds and the formation of companies used to hide and benefit from illicit funds.
In the article presented at the conference, the authors developed a conceptual framework for identifying such profesional enablers of illicit finance and distinguishing them from adjacent concepts such as gatekeepers, intermediaries, facilitators, and principals. The framework identifies ten dimensions of enabling, organised into scope, constitutive, and normative categories. The new definition identifies actors who willingly or negligently allow individuals and corporations to hide, move, protect, launder, invest, or enjoy the benefits of illicitly obtained or transferred funds, resulting in economic, social, or political harm. The article concludes by linking differing enabler mental states to proportionate regulatory, supervisory, educational, exposure, and sanctioning responses.