Reluctant partners?: Banks in the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing in France

Thierry Godefroy (1) , Pierre Lascoumes (2) , Gilles Favarel-Garrigues (3)

1 CESDIP - Centre de recherches sociologiques sur le droit et les institutions pénales
2 CEE - Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée (Sciences Po, CNRS)
3 CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS)

The implementation of the ongoing anti-money laundering/counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) drive within the private sector reflects a tension between the logic of state sovereignty and that of neoliberal governmentality. In this article, we show that the main concrete output of two decades of global policy in this area is found in the routinization of professional interactions between banks and law enforcement agencies. Banks recruit former law enforcement officials and attempt to establish informal ties with the police or intelligence bodies. They are also actively involved in intelligence-led policing missions and have become embedded in interdependent relationships with law enforcement agencies. Drawing on data from 75 interviews conducted with AML/CTF professionals within France, the article shows how new everyday professional routines in the banking sector reflect governmentality in the making.

Keywords: policing; surveillance; money laundering; international security; banks; Foucault; governmentality

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Political science

Thierry Godefroy, Pierre Lascoumes, Gilles Favarel-Garrigues. Reluctant partners?: Banks in the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing in France. Security Dialogue, 2011, 42 (2), pp.179-196. ⟨10.1177/0967010611399615⟩. ⟨hal-00972811⟩