ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to explain what compliance drivers African countries and emerging economies (ACs/EEs) respond to, how the agency relationship explains their behaviour and how the Regional Bureau Africa (RBA) may indeed not resolve the existing legitimacy crises. Legal compliance drivers are backed by non-legal drivers, such as reputation, political will, domestic conditions, resources and capacity deficits. The belated associate membership of the ACs within Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional bodies has tinted their perception of the FATF’s legitimacy. It argues that whilst the RBA recently adopted by the FATF was aimed at resolving Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) compliance differentials by considering the peculiarities of countries, its flawed conceptualisation has hindered its ability to achieve this aim. The power-play involved in negotiations between the ‘North-South strategically important countries’ was predicated on the assumption that representation would be a catalyst for improved compliance with AML/CFT recommendations.
