Mexican suspicious transaction reporting: legislation

Traces how Mexico’s anti‐money laundering regime developed, under international pressure, since 1989; the country is considered one of the top 20 centres of laundered money. Outlines the suspicious transactions reporting system in the form of a diagram, and describes how the Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit now supervises the financial system. Moves on to problems with the legislation; in spite of membership of the Financial Action Task Force and entry into various other agreements, Mexico still has loopholes in its campaign against money laundering, and these centre on the very slow exchange of information at the national and international levels, plus the fact that banking secrecy remains enshrined in the constitution. Suggests a technical information service with online access for processing reports and detecting patterns of laundering activities.