The government doesn't hold hedge funds to the same standards banks have to follow to prevent money laundering

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

• The federal government has required banks, brokerages, and even casinos to take steps to stop customers from using them to clean dirty money.
• However, investment companies such as hedge funds and private equity firms have escaped multiple efforts to subject them to rules meant to combat money laundering.
• Experts say it's impossible to quantify how much money may be laundered through hedge funds.
• While prosecutors retain the right to charge such a fund if it is proven to have participated in money laundering, regulators cannot fine the fund's managers for not taking steps to prevent abuse.
• The Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental organization that seeks to combat money laundering around the world, has repeatedly tried to anti-money laundering rules for investment advisers to no avail. 

For many years, the federal government has required banks, brokerages, and even casinos to take steps to stop customers from using them to clean dirty money.

Yet one major part of the financial system has remained stubbornly exempt, despite experts' repeated warnings that it is vulnerable to criminal manipulation.See the rest of the story at Business Insider

NOW WATCH: America is more politically divided than ever, and the government shutdown only makes that more apparent

See Also:

• The world's 10 fastest growing cities are all in India
• The trial of drug kingpin El Chapo exposes just how powerful Mexico's cartels are — and how ineffective a wall would be
• A millennial movement supported by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to recruit an army of young people