This is the "proportion of criminal funds recovered" [1]. So of the $1.6 trillion laundered out of $2.1 trillion of estimated criminal proceeds, only a few billion were confiscated or seized.

The author then argues for reducing fines on banks and financial institutions, increasing criminal asset forfeiture regimes and moving away from suspicious transaction reporting. (I agree with Nos. 2 and 3; for No. 1, I'm skeptical given the author is a consultant [2].)

Tornado's sanctions were imposed by OFAC. From what we can tell, it wasn't AML reporting but criminal investigations that yielded the tip. Your source thus refutes your argument. Following the author's prescription, we'd now work to investigate everyone around Tornado and seize their assets if they're doing anything illegal.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/25741292.2020.17... page 82

[2] https://www.amlassurance.com/better-outcomes.html

Criminal asset forfeiture is not civil asset forfeiture. You need to actually prove someone committed a crime that generated the assets, in order to seize them, and the burden of proof is that of criminal law: beyond reasonable doubt, which is much higher than the preponderance of evidence standard of civil law.

>>Following the author's prescription, we'd now work to investigate everyone around Tornado and seize their assets if they're doing anything illegal.

The author didn't suggest investigating any one who privately transacts, but in any case, what you describe would be far more just than the current situation, where all Americans are having their right to use TC denied, under the pain of sanctions law, as a roundabout way of punishing North Korea.

The author is speaking to a global audience and using those terms colloquially; I parroted their language.

Table 1 [1] mentions "proportion of confiscations attributed to anti-money laundering policies" as its operating measure (and only has columns for Europe and global). Figure 3 [a] measures total US asset forfeitures, which covers both criminal and civil forfeiture [2].

So yes, the paper's prescription would involve investigating, freezing where suspicious, charging and seizing assets. The success metric uses confiscated assets as its numerator.

To be clear, I'm advocating for none of this. Just refuting that source and the figure quoted for AML programmes' success rates. The paper doesn't speak to anything about OFAC, but instead to what should and shouldn't be done after an entity is sanctioned or deemed a suspect.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/25741292.2020.17... page 88

[a] page 84, bottom

[2] https://www.justice.gov/afms/about-asset-forfeiture-program-...

I’m showing why a source is irrelevant to an argument, in part because of some unintuitive jargon. (Though the part quoted by the original comment is straightforward for anyone who reads the paper and the definitions around the 0.2% figure.)

If one takes directly the paper’s suggested endpoint, seized funds as a measure of programme success, it counters the gist of OP’s argument.

> release they put out highlights the allegation of TC being used for money laundering, and sanctions enforcement is one of the objectives of AML programs

AML, in the paper’s context, begins and ends with banks telling on suspicious accounts. For detecting money laundering. TC was fingered by feds analysing the blockchain. That’s police work. Different monitoring mechanism.

The goal is stopping money laundering. But the midpoint, identifying accounts laundering money, and endpoint, seizing those funds, are downstream of the paper’s concerns. To the extent the paper discusses OFAC and similar agencies, it implies an endpoint far more drastic than anything done so far to Tornado or its users.

> the paper is relevant

Tangentially. But not in furtherance of the argument that OFAC sanctions are ineffective.