How to identify norms, laws, and regulations that facilitate illicit financial flows and related financial crimes

Purpose Illicit financial flows are targeted by the United Nations’ (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, these illicit flows are not entirely understood. Furthermore, they can benefit from economic norms, laws and regulations that lack mechanisms to detect and penalize them. This paper aims to investigate whether a recent test, the embezzler test, can be used to identify regulatory architectures that facilitate illicit financial flows and related financial crimes. Design/methodology/approach This paper develops a more advanced version of the embezzler test in terms of definitions and practical implementation methodology. Findings In this test, the definition of embezzlement can be understood to be the occurrence of illicit financial flows crossing the boundaries of organizations and/or countries. This is a multistage test, which intentionally simulates illicit financial flows to observe how well equipped is the regulatory architecture to deal with other financial offences that are related with these flows, such as theft, money laundering, fraud, corruption, market manipulation and tax evasion. Research limitations/implications Future research can use the version of this test to stress test a large range of economic norms, laws and regulations. Social implications This test’s new version can assist achieve the UN SDGs’ illicit financial flow reduction target. Furthermore, it can be used to study both existing and proposed norms, laws and regulation. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first explicit test that has been presented to identify norms, laws and regulations that facilitate illicit financial flows and related financial crimes.