Legal persons and arrangements money laundering risk assessment: the Brazilian methodology

PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to the discussion about the misuse of legal persons for money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF) through the study of methodologies for countries' legal persons and legal arrangements risk assessments in accordance with the transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons and arrangements requirements of the Financial Action Task Force. Design/methodology/approachTo do that, the authors will review some of the results of preview risk assessments by selected countries, and based on that, the authors will discuss the Brazilian methodology and the achieved results. FindingsThe authors argue that this methodology can lead to better results than the most common ones and deliver outputs that are important to the development of countries' anti-ML/TF. Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss the results and limitations of the current most widely used methodology for legal persons and arrangements money laundering risk assessment and to propose the use of a more efficient one.