The Most Denounced, the Least Punished: Ruling Elites, Illegalisms, and Anti-Money Laundering

Abstract

This article contributes empirically and conceptually to the literature on finance and security in the light of anti-money laundering and to discussions on international crime control and social order. It draws on unique data in Switzerland to question the chain of security through which the main global policy against crime is produced in concreto. What and who is denounced by financial institutions for suspicious activities? What and who is ultimately punished by criminal justice institutions? Is the fight against illicit finance nothing more than a “broken enforcement system,” or a universal punitive instrument, regardless targeted actors? What does it mean for the general social order at the time of financial capitalism? The article revisits Foucault's lost in translation concept of illegalism to shift the questioning of international crime control to the issue of power relationships’ recomposition and social, class differentiation. As a global policy against criminality at large, anti-money laundering represents a critical entry point to question the general economy of illegalisms from an international perspective. The article makes explicit that economic and financial illegalisms are less punished than others, and they are even less so when practiced by ruling elites, even if they are the most denounced at first.