Predicting money laundering sanctions using machine learning algorithms and artificial neural networks

ABSTRACT

This article used machine learning (ML) and artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms to predict the likelihood of a country being sanctioned by the Basel Institute on Governance for not adhering to anti-money laundering (AML) standards. Data for this paper came from the Basel AML Index and the World Bank. The results showed that the logistic regression and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers had the highest performance and balanced accuracy scores in sanction prediction. Additionally, these two algorithms also had the highest precision, specificity, and F1 scores, indicating that they were robust in their predictions of money laundering sanctions. In contrast to the ML classifiers, the ANN model had the highest sensitivity and receiver operating characteristic scores for money laundering sanctions. The strongest predictors of sanctions are financial transparency, political and legal risks, unemployment rate, and money laundering and terrorist financing risks. These findings reinforce the potential practical applications of ML and ANN models in predicting sanctions.

KEYWORDS:

• Sanctions
• anti-money laundering
• machine learning
• artificial neural network
• Basel

JEL CODES:

• C63
• D73
• D81

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).