BANKING COMPLIANCE AS A LEGAL MECHANISM FOR COMBATING MONEY LAUNDERING: A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN SUDAN AND QATAR

Abstract

Money laundering has remained a major threat to the integrity, transparency and legitimacy of financial systems of nations and Global economic governance. In this background, banking compliance has developed as a focal point of law enforcement to prevent, identify and address illicit financial flows by turning the private banks to functioning legal protective intermediaries of state AML enforcement. This paper will conduct comparative law analysis of the Sudan and Qatar to determine how regulatory frameworks, institutional power, the coherence of enforcement and the financial governance ability influences the quality of operations of banking compliance in combating money laundering. Although the formal alignment of legislation with the recommendations of the FATF has been achieved in both states, particularly by the AML/CTF Act 2014 of Sudan and the Law No. 20 of 2019 in Qatar, the effectiveness gap is very significant. The presence of strong supervisory coordination, independent FIU, digitalized risk-based compliance culture and high STR reporting is a substantive AML performance in Qatar. In comparison, Sudan is symbolically compliant which is defined by weak enforcement, low institutional capacity, divided oversight, manual compliance system and low technology integration. The comparative results prove that the AML legal success is not only conditional upon legislative modernization but on the institutional embeddedness and ability to govern. The research indicates that the banking compliance works best as a legal rule when law is in collaboration with technology, state integrity, independent oversight and inter-agency collaboration.