- agree that London is a hive of illicit financial activity including money laundering and tax evasion however at least the HMRC and FCA dictate that the financial institutions should take efforts to track and report the source of funds etc (how diligent they are in that is another discussion), where there is no obligation of US FIs to ask too many questions and report back the financial situation of non-US customers. However, if someone wants to launder money or evade tax, there will always be ways to do it regardless of what country you are in
FATCA was a US legislation to track down and chase US citizens abroad who are not declaring taxable income outside of the US requiring overseas financial institutions to report and financial activity being undertaken by a US citizen. Other countries through the OECD wanted and decided to adopt similar and CRS was introduced, which many countries have not put into legislation. One of the countries that hasn’t done this is the US that has no obligation to report activities of foreign citizens other than a few nationalities that they were forced to enter into a reciprocal agreement for FATCA. Which demonstrates again that one of the biggest tax havens in the world is the US
