You can take this to the bank. The freewheeling days of global money laundering are ending. In fact, money laundering, as we know it now, probably won't make it very far into the new century. He's right of course.
Cash is king.
Of course, one key weapon in the fight against money laundering, is for the financial leaders of the world to make the effort to stop the drug trafficking and child prostitution and pornography that create the money in the first place. The bankers of the world couldn't care less about the wave of crack babies that will be born in Harlem this month. Trust me on this, if they cared, even a little, not one ounce of cocaine would find its way to the streets of New York tomorrow. Instead, what had caused this campaign to crush tax havens, is an effort by the world's financial centers to tighten up the whole international financial system in the wake of the Asian and Russian financial crises. In other words, this recent global attempt to stop money laundering is a matter of self-preservation, plain and simple.