ACAMS Today Magazine (Nov-Dec 2008) Vol. 7 No. 6 | Page 16

AML CHALLENGES What you need to know about human trafficking in East Asia and the Pacific A ccording to the International Monetary Fund, funds laundered in the world today could range between two and five percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Among the prominent criminal activities that are sourced to money laundering is human trafficking. Although it’s convenient to regard the world we live in as modern and advanced — a world led by human rights — we in the anti-money laundering industry have to face the inconvenient truth that slavery in its different modern forms still exists and, moreover, generates substantial profits around the world. Today, human trafficking has become one of the most profitable illicit industries worldwide, generating revenues of more than an estimated U.S. $31 billion per year. This article serves as a study of human trafficking in East Asia and the Pacific. Throughout the article, we examine the role of the different countries in East Asia with regard to human trafficking, the extent of human trafficking in each of these countries, the possible prominent players in the crime and the current legal measures taken in each country to confront the problem. The ultimate goal of the article is to provide the AML professional and reader with a geopolitical assessment of the problem, its magnitude and the 16 acams today | existing preventive legal mechanisms. For that reason, it is no coincidence that the East Asia region was chosen for this study — according to the International Labor Organization (ILO) Report on Forced Labor (2005), globally there are at least 2,450,000 people in forced labor as a result of trafficking in persons. Of these, more than half — 1,360,000 people — are trafficked in Asia and the Pacific. The ILO report has divided trafficked forced labor into the following forms: Commercial sexual exploitation (43%), Economic exploitation (32%) and Mixed (25%). In this study, we refer to both forms of human trafficking. Legal definitions of human trafficking International definition According to the United Nations (U.N.), human trafficking is “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” November / December 2008 Many practitioners and organizations of international law consider human trafficking to be a crime against humanity based on this treaty that considers enslavement, imprisonment and sexual slavery as such. The U.N. has recognized in recent years that the problem of human trafficking does not stand by itself, but is rather intertwined with financial-based, overarching crimes such as organized crime and money laundering; one crime inherently leads to the other, creating together international and regional criminal networks. As an international organization, the U.N. addresses the problem via its legal and executive tools — conventions and relevant sub-organizations that try to transform the words of relevant conventions into actual deeds. One of the prominent suborganizations that address these issues is the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which established The Global Program against Trafficking in Human Beings (GPAT) to assist countries combating human trafficking and to implement the Convention of Transnational Organized Crime and its anti-trafficking protocol. In addition, there are U.N. regional organizations such as the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the United Nations I