Policy brief 05/2014: Closing banks to the corrupt: the role of due diligence and peps

One essential step to stopping grand corruption is ensuring that the corrupt do not have a safe haven to hide their ill-gotten funds. The corrupt often turn to banks and other financial institutions to legitimise their monies, bringing them into the formal financial system. Financial institutions can prevent these flows from ever entering the system. They can do this by effectively identifying perspective investors and clients as “Politically Exposed Persons” (PEPs): individuals who have held or are in public office. By flagging potential PEPs, banks are then able to do additional checks on the source of funds and to ensure that they are free of corruption.