| dc.description.abstract | Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to decipher the law relating to cybercrimes regulation and
benchmarking best practices that could be adopted to address regulatory weaknesses in some countries. In
many countries, cybercrimes regulation is undermined by a lack of robust regulatory regimes. The few
regimes that are available are fragmented with no coherent global strategy to deal with these offences across
countries and regions. There is a lot of scholarly literature to corroborate the fact that lack of requisite laws on
cyber and financial crimes has rendered states lame ducks when faced with well-organized and resourced
criminal organizations.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper articulates intricacies of regulating money laundering
and cybercrimes using data from selected African countries and beyond. Generic issues on financial crimes,
cybercrimes, case law and policy documents drawn from different jurisdictions have been examined based on
the objectives of the study. Cybercrime activities and anti-money laundering (AML) regulatory models have
been evaluated drawing on experiences of selected countries in Africa and other countries. Questions whether
suspicious activity reports are appropriate as a model to counter incidences of cybercrime activities or
whether other options should be considered were also examined. Most notably, the risk-based assessment
model such as profiling of high-risk clients rather than reporting every transaction will be compared and
possibly suggested as a suitable alternative in financial crimes regulation. The authors have evaluated the
data and AML regulatory approaches and other policy measures to curtail the foregoing threats. There is a
possibility that AML tools used by financial institutions and banking activities could be used to prevent the
growing threat of cybercrimes. The paper has also been enriched by case studies of tenuous legal systems and
fragmentation of laws on cybercrimes and financial crimes and how these gaps have been exploited to fuel
incidences of illicit criminal activities around the globe. The paper has also used empirical data including
visits to banks and financial institutions on the nexus between the threat of cybercrimes and money
laundering prevention. The authors have been selective, evaluating cases from 2000s to date. This timeline
was particularly important because of the increased incidences of computers and money laundering threats
globally. After analysing the data, the authors were able to delineate that there is a close connection between
the foregoing two crimes, how they operate in practice, differences and similarities in the counter-measures
used to mitigate their negative effect globally. Thus, in the authors’ contention, this is a novel study that is
likely to spur farther research on law and policy against cyber and AML crimes not only in Uganda but also in
other jurisdictions. At the same time, the findings of the study could complement, and perhaps also complete,
the work of scholars who have written papers on cybercrimes to advocate for regulatory changes fight
against these offences. The study will also complement the work of other researchers who have challenged the
segregation of cybercrimes and financial crimes in local and international regulatory discourses. This
research aims to make a significant contribution to the study of cybercrimes and how they are regulated in
international law.
Findings – The findings of the paper have confirmed that the high incidences of money laundering and
cybercrimes today are partly fuelled by inherent weaknesses in the global regulatory system and partly
fuelled by weaknesses at an individual state level. Many countries have enacted a raft of anti-cyber and AML
legislation but this notwithstanding, these laws have not been used to stem cross-border crimes globally | en_US |
