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The Risky Politics of Anti-Money Laundering

By Roberto Simon, Emilie Sweigart

In Mexico and Brazil, financial intelligence is dangerously entering the political arena.

This article is adapted from AQ's special report on migration

Several factors have made Latin America better at detecting grand corruption, but one has been particularly transformative: progress in anti-money laundering (AML). All major anti-corruption operations over the past decade either began with or heavily relied on financial intelligence — from Brazil’s Lava Jato and its subsequent Odebrecht investigations in several countries, to campaign financing cases in Chile or prosecutions...

Read this article on the Americas Quarterly website. | Subscribe to AQ.

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