Back to basics

The French call it a coup de foudre – a thunderbolt. It’s that instant and intense feeling of love, and I’m lucky enough to have felt it twice, writes Sue Grossey. The first was when I saw the man who is now my husband, on my second day at university – as my father said ruefully at our wedding, the poor lad didn’t stand a chance. And the second was when I was working as a freelance writer and was asked to put together a book chapter on money laundering. I’d heard the phrase before, of course, and knew vaguely that it was criminal and not to be encouraged, but as to its endless beauty and variety and complexity – well, that was the thunderbolt. I knew then that I wanted to learn more, and here I am, nearly 15 years later, spending every working day thinking and reading and writing and talking about money laundering. True love, you see, does last forever.

Susan Grossey may be contacted on +44 (0)1223 563636, susan@thinkingaboutcrime.com

However, like a minor character in a Richard Curtis rom-com, I soon found that not everyone was as fond of my true love as I am. (From here on in, just to be clear, I’m talking about money laundering rather than about my husband.) Just because I felt, as Tony Blair put it so eloquently, with every fibre of my being that money laundering was wrong, it did not follow that everyone agreed with me. And I’m not talking about criminals, whom one might reasonably expect to defend the practice. I’m talking about friends and family, as well as those working in the regulated sector and even – in one or two extreme cases – those working in compliance. Rather than continue to nod politely and reply (in the spirit of good counselling) “I can see why you might think that”, I thought I should go back to the beginning and try to explain clearly why I think that money laundering is wrong and therefore that anti-money laundering is right.