AML Network

Expert Opinions & Editorials

What this section is for

Most of AML Network is built on the record. The Watchdog Databases, AML News, AML Laws & Regulations and Watchdog Reports sections set out what has been filed, registered, enacted, alleged or found, with sources attached. That work is deliberately flat in tone: it tells you what exists, not what to think about it.

This section is where argument is permitted. Expert Opinions & Editorials carries signed pieces by compliance practitioners, investigators, academics, former supervisors and journalists who work on financial crime, along with occasional editorials written by this publication. The pieces listed below this introduction generally fall into four kinds:

  • Interpretation. Reading a new or amended instrument — a provision of the EU anti-money-laundering package, a revised FATF Recommendation, a supervisory statement under the UK Money Laundering Regulations — against what actually happens inside regulated firms.
  • Critique. Arguing that a control does not work as intended: beneficial ownership registers that accept unverified declarations, transaction monitoring calibrated to produce volume rather than intelligence, thresholds that have not been revisited in years.
  • Practice. Accounts from people who run the systems: how enhanced due diligence on politically exposed persons is really conducted, what an MLRO does with a report nobody downstream acts on.
  • Dissent. Disagreement with our own reporting, our methodology, or the inclusion criteria we apply to the databases.

Opinion is kept separate from reporting

Editorial material appears only here. It is labelled as opinion at the top of every piece, carries a named byline, and is not mirrored into the news, database, legal or report sections. Nothing published in this section is used as a source for a database entry or a research finding elsewhere on the site.

The separation applies to the argument, not to the facts. A contributor may reach any conclusion they can defend, but the factual claims used to get there are checked to the same standard as our reporting. Where an author's position conflicts with something we have published, we say so in the piece rather than quietly reconciling the two. Views expressed by contributors are their own and should not be read as the position of AML Network.

Standards contributors are held to

  • Evidence before assertion. Factual claims must be traceable to a public document: a filing, a register entry, a court record, a supervisory notice, a regulator's own publication. Assertions that cannot be sourced are removed before publication.
  • Accuracy about the law. Obligations should be described as they stand under the applicable instrument — the FATF Recommendations, the EU directives and regulation, the US Bank Secrecy Act, the UK Money Laundering Regulations — without overstating their scope or inventing detail to strengthen a point.
  • Care with named parties. Allegations about identifiable people or firms require documentary support. An investigation is not a finding, an enforcement action is not a conviction, and an entry in a screening database is not proof of wrongdoing. Language must reflect those distinctions.
  • No placed content. We do not publish pieces commissioned, drafted or paid for by a party with an interest in the outcome, and we do not run vendor promotion in editorial form.
  • Right of reply. Where a piece criticises an identifiable organisation, we approach it before publication and carry any substantive response alongside the article.

Disclosure of interests

Every piece carries a short interests note beneath the byline. Contributors disclose current and recent employment, consultancy and advisory work, board or committee positions, expert witness engagements, relevant shareholdings, and any grant or funding connected to the subject. The note sits with the article itself rather than in a policy page few readers reach.

Having a commercial interest in anti-money-laundering work is not a bar to publication. Most people with useful expertise in this field are paid by it, whether by banks, law firms, technology vendors or governments. Readers are simply entitled to know what those interests are and to weigh the argument accordingly. Where a material interest emerges after publication, we append a correction, and where it was concealed we withdraw the piece and record why.

How to submit a piece

Pitches go to support@amlreview.co with "Opinion" in the subject line. Include a summary of the argument in around 200 words, the sources you intend to rely on, a one-paragraph biography, and your standing interests. Completed drafts are welcome, but a pitch first usually saves everyone time. Most published pieces run to between 800 and 1,500 words.

We edit for structure, clarity and house style, and we return substantive edits to the author before publication. Where a contributor faces a genuine professional or legal risk — serving compliance staff writing about supervisory practice, for instance — we will consider pseudonymous publication, on the condition that the author's identity is known to the editors and their interests are still disclosed in general terms. Not every pitch will run, and we will say plainly why when it does not.