Based on the information visualization technology and the Web of Science database, which includes English research articles on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing from 1993 to 2013, this paper explores the law and development status and research focus of international anti-money laundering research by analyzing national distribution, authors’ distribution, organization distribution, cited journals, keywords, and situation to be cited by literatures (1993- 2013) on money laundering with CiteSpace II application.
Money laundering is the processing of these criminal proceeds to disguise their illegal origin. This process is of critical importance, as it enables the criminal to enjoy these profits without jeopardising their source [
CiteSpace II is the second generation Java application for visualizing and analyzing emerging trends and patterns in scientific literature, developed by Dr. Chaomei Chen at College of Information Science and Technology in American Drexel University. It is a multivariate, time sharing, and dynamic information visualization software which is able to show the intellectual base, research front, development situation, knowledge transition and evolution process of a subject or research field on a knowledge map easily and clearly. Each colorful ring is a node of the network on behalf of the author, the country, or cited reference and so on. The links between nodes implies the cooperation relationship between authors, institutions or the co-cited relationship between scientific literatures or periodical journals. Citation tree-rings represent the citation history of an article. The color of a citation ring denotes the time of corresponding citations. The thickness of a ring is proportional to the number of citations in a given time slice.
CiteSpace II combines scientometrics with knowledge visualization techniques with the method of citation analysis. In general, a citation implies a relationship between a part or the whole of the cited document and a part or the whole of the citing document [
A commonly used centrality metric is the betweenness centrality [
The input data for CiteSpace II was retrieved from citation index databases via WoS (SSCI, SCI-Expanded, the CPCI-S database) based on a topic search for articles published between 1993 and 2013 on money laundering or terrorist financing. The scope of the search included four topic fields in each bibliographic record: title, abstract, descriptors, and identifiers. The search was limited to articles in English only. The resultant dataset contains a total of 557 records including article, proceedings paper, book review, editorial material. With corresponding threshold setting CiteSpace II produced the following charts and figures.
Drawing visualized knowledge mapping of countries and districts in worldwide AML studies can discover the distribution of international AML research institutions and persons and reflect a country’s impact upon AML efforts to some extent. From
The knowledge map of international authors who study anti-money laundering can, to a certain degree, illustrate the influence and significance of different authors and reflect their contributions to AML research. As shown in
Country | Frequency | Country | Frequency |
---|---|---|---|
USA | 97 | Romania | 17 |
China | 42 | Canada | 14 |
England | 39 | Netherlands | 13 |
Germany | 21 | Italy | 10 |
Australia | 19 | Ukraine | 10 |
Author | Frequency | Author | Frequency |
---|---|---|---|
[Anonymous] | 10 | Pengzhu Zhang | 4 |
W. Hetzer | 10 | Agus Sudjianto | 4 |
Dongming Xu | 5 | Thomas Naylor | 3 |
Shijia Gao | 4 | J. C. Sharman | 3 |
Ping Song | 4 | J. Tang | 3 |
The knowledge map of institutions which study anti-money laundering can reveal the institutions’ influence and their position in this field and show the active institutions focusing on anti-money laundering research. As shown in
The network map of cited journals was provided by CiteSpace II through the cited journal function (as shown in
Institution | Frequency | Institution | Frequency |
---|---|---|---|
Wuhan Univ. Technol. | 7 | McGill Univ. | 4 |
Cardiff Univ. | 5 | Griffith Univ. | 4 |
Univ. Queensland | 5 | Bank Amer. | 3 |
Univ. London | 5 | Carnegie Mellon Univ. | 3 |
Florida Int. Univ. | 4 | Univ. Virginia | 3 |
Univ. Coll. Dublin | 4 | SW Jiaotong Univ. | 2 |
Frequency | Centrality | Year | Journal |
---|---|---|---|
51 | 0.14 | 2006 | Journal of Money Laundering Control |
48 | 0.11 | 1991 | Crime, Law and Social Change |
32 | 0.05 | 1999 | Lecture Notes in Computer Science |
30 | 0.19 | 1989 | American Criminal Law Review |
27 | 0.13 | 1997 | International Organization |
25 | 0.19 | 2002 | Journal of Financial Crime |
23 | 0.07 | 1985 | Communications of the ACM |
20 | 0.02 | 1987 | Pacific Law Journal |
20 | 0.24 | 1976 | Foreign Affairs |
20 | 0.01 | 1996 | British Journal of Criminology |
identification of money laundering which has become an important topic of the anti-money laundering study. “American Criminal Law Review” ranks the fourth with cited frequency for 30 times. “American Criminal Law Review” is the most important magazines on Criminal Law research. The United States is in the leading position in the anti-money laundering research, formulation of relevant laws and regulations as well as the construction of anti-money laundering system in the world. So this Criminal Law journal gains much attention from the international anti-money laundering research field. “International Organization” ranks the fifth with cited frequency for 27 times, which is a review journal studying international affairs and plays an important role in this field. Money laundering crime often involves in drug trafficking, terrorist financing and other criminal activities, which is often accompanied by the fund flow between countries. So it has become a crucial international problem to realize the cooperation between countries to fight against money laundering. In addition, some of the foreign periodicals such as “Journal of Financial Crime”, “Communications of the ACM” have quite high influence in international anti-money laundering research.
Keywords search is an effective method of document retrievals for keyword is the important component of academic papers. They provide a detailed account of the field of science studied, reveal the rich detail of more heterogeneous fields or document set, and expose the network of concepts (and the like) to the fullest comprehensible extent [
Frequency | Centrality | Keywords | Frequency | Centrality | Keywords |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
66 | 0.43 | money laundering | 6 | 0.05 | fraud detection |
22 | 0.34 | terrorism | 6 | 0.15 | terrorism financing |
19 | 0.16 | anti-money laundering | 5 | 0.01 | security |
11 | 0.01 | crime | 5 | 0.06 | electronic cash |
11 | 0.03 | data mining | 5 | 0.06 | enforcement |
9 | 0.01 | politics | 4 | 0.01 | compliance |
9 | 0.08 | corruption | 4 | 0.01 | risk |
8 | 0.08 | globalization | 4 | 0.04 | intelligence |
6 | 0.01 | shadow economy | 4 | 0.13 | networks |
6 | 0.02 | state | 3 | 0.14 | classification |
software solutions, intrusion detection, computer intrusion, cryptology, information security, data mining. To combat the predicate crimes such as drug crime, terrorist financing and so on, anti-money laundering gets much attention from countries around the world. Therefore, the research on the predicate crimes of money laundering has always been a research focus in the field of anti-money laundering research. And in order to improve the effectiveness of work on combating money laundering, emphasis is placed on practical research in this field. The close relationship between banks and cash make it become the sector with high possibility to be made use by money laundering crime and the key object in anti-money laundering research. It’s quite rational that construction of a national regulatory system and the implementation of the supervision mechanism centered upon the banking sector. Moreover an efficient supervision means a relatively accurate risk rating system and ability to recognize suspicious transactions behavior, which is dependent on the computer technology, especially data mining, information security, etc.
A progressive co-citation analysis takes multiple co-citation networks from consecutive time intervals as input and produces a merged network to represent the evolution of the underlying domain [
Label terms are selected from titles, keywords, or abstracts of articles that specifically cite members of the cluster. If the members of a cluster represent the footprints of an invisible college or a paradigm, the labels reflect what the invisible college and the paradigm. These terms are ranked by three different algorithms: tf * idf, log-likelihood ratio (LLR) tests, and mutual information. Labels selected by tf * idf weighting tend to represent the most salient aspect of a cluster, whereas those chosen by log-likelihood ratio tests and mutual information tend to reflect a unique aspect of a cluster. Through the automatic clustering function three hot topics on anti-money laundering research are produced by CiteSpace II according to the tf * idf algorithm, which are the predicate crime research, money laundering risk research, anti-money laundering research in Germany.
The biggest cluster 26 contains 46 nodes including two pivotal points and 5 nodes with cited frequency higher than 15 times. This cluster is about the predicate crime and legislation of anti-money laundering study from the identifiers “crime”, “police cooperation”, “international” and so on. GR Strafer’s “money laundering: the crime of the 90s” with cited frequency up to 23 times outlines the roots of the original 1986 legislation, summarizes the elements of the new “money laundering” offenses, discusses the interpretive problems likely to be encountered by the court and practitioners confronted with these provisions, and finally discusses some of the recent changes in the legislation and proposes changes to the statue that would guarantee constitutionality and provide sufficient standards to ensure criminal activity and not innocent business transactions punished by statutes [
Frequency | Centrality | Year | Cited Reference |
---|---|---|---|
27 | 0.05 | 2004 | Truman, E.M. Chasing Dirty Money: The Fight against Money Laundering |
23 | 0.05 | 1989 | Strafer, G.R. Money Laundering: The Crime of the 90s |
20 | 0.03 | 1987 | Irvine, M.R. Money Laundering Control Act of 1986: Tainted Money and the Criminal Defense Lawyer |
18 | 0.02 | 1988 | Harmon, J.R. and James, D. United States Money Laundering Laws: International Implications |
14 | 0.12 | 2000 | Stessens, G. Money Laundering: A New International Law Enforcement Model |
14 | 0 | 1994 | Razzano, F.C. American Money Laundering Statutes: The Case for a Worldwide System of Banking Compliance Programs |
13 | 0.16 | 2000 | Adams, T.A. Tacking on Money Laundering Charges to White Collar Crimes: What Did Congress Intend, and What Are the Courts Doing |
12 | 0 | 1993 | Elizabeth, J. Money Laundering: Business Beware |
12 | 0 | 1984 | Kaufman, I.R. Cash Connection: Organized Crime, Financial Institutions, and Money Laundering |
12 | 0 | 2001 | Andres, R. International Money Laundering Law Enforcement & the USA Patriot Act of 2001 |
broad analysis of the legal issues raised by the international fight against money laundering and offers an extensive comparative research of the criminal and preventive law aspects from an international perspective [
The second big cluster 24 contains 37 nodes including a pivotal point and one with cited frequency higher than 15. We come to the conclusion that this cluster studies the money laundering risk in view of identifiers risk, Europe, economy et al. “The Tenuous Relationship Between The Fight Against Money Laundering and The Disruption of Criminal Finance” Cuellar explains some ways that money’s illegal origin is hidden and by explaining the tangle of laws and regulations designed to interfere with that process and introduce both theoretical justifications and the legislative and executive history [
The third big cluster 24 contains 15 nodes representing the literatures of Hetzer, Meyer, Bersmann. Besides, the literatures from Hetzer are cited up to11times. We come to the conclusion that this cluster studies the money laundering risk in view of identifiers risk, Europe, economy et al. The cluster shows the study of the three German scholars with the representative Hetzer mainly concentrate on the predicate offences of anti-money laundering, especially organized crime, financial crime ( the year of nodes in this clusters are almost during 1990 and 2000). He points out the vital function of combat money laundering on controlling the predicate offences as well as the role that BKA plays in fighting money laundering crime and puts forward the corresponding legal countermeasure on the basis of exploring the close relations between financial crime, organized crime, tax evasion and money laundering. Hetzer holds that, with globalization, deregulation, and constantly evolution in financial market, money laundering problems has stepped into a new situation that new financial tools such as financial derivatives are used by money launders [
Based on the information visualization technology, we explore the law and status of development and research focus of international anti-money laundering research by analyzing the nationality, author, institution, situation to be cited of literatures on money laundering collected by WoS database with the help of CiteSpace application.
The United States is at the leading position in the international anti-money laundering research field, followed by China, Britain, Germany, Australia, respectively, Romania, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy and Ukraine, all of which are the main force in the field of anti-money laundering research. In addition, Hetzer, Xu, Gao, Song, Zhang, Sudjianto, Naylor, Sharman and Tang play an important role and have extensive and profound influence in this research field. “Journal of Money Laundering Control” is the only periodical specializing in the field of anti-money laundering research in the world currently and plays a prospective and guiding role in revolution, innovation and development. Other periodicals with much concern in this field are “Crime, Law and Social Change”, “the section Notes in Computer Science”, “the American Criminal Law Review” and “International Organization”. In addition, some of the foreign periodicals, such as “Journal of Financial Crime” and “Communications of the ACM”, have high influence in international anti-money laundering research field.
Through analyzing, inducing and summarizing the content of literatures with high cited frequency, we get three main research focuses in the field: (1) the research on predicate crimes of money laundering; (2) the research on anti-money laundering legislation; (3) the research on money laundering risk in Germany.
This paper has some practical meaning considering the data sources, research methods and the research result. Overall, this study is just an exploratory research with some deficiencies and needs to be improved in the future study because of the limitation of scope and amount literature collected by the database and some errors in literature retrieval, data statistic and processing.