AGO’s Barden is now CNMI’s anti-money laundering specialist

CNMI assistant attorney general Kenneth Barden is among a select group of people who recently passed the rigorous Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists certification examination.

As such, Barden has now earned the right to use the designation CAMS, or Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist.

The CAMS credential is awarded based upon passing an examination that provides a highly objective measure of an individual’s knowledge of the challenging arena of international anti-money laundering.

The certification program is administered by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, the preeminent international organization for Anti-Money Laundering professionals, with 1,700 members in more than 73 countries.

The CAMS designation will buttress the resumes of those who hold it and will lend confidence to their employers and colleagues. This designation signals a considerable standard of competence in the AML field.

The passage of the USA Patriot Act, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, placed greater emphasis on AML issues. Stringent requirements were placed on institutions to increase their efforts at customer identification and verification in an effort to detect terrorist groups. This increased scrutiny of potential laundering soft targets reinforces the need for certified professionals to protect institutions from potentially devastating laundering crimes.

The 100-question certification exam was assembled over a nine-month period by a team of 30 leading anti-money laundering professionals convened by ACAMS.

An independent firm of psychometricians, Kansas-based Applied Measurement Professionals Inc., then reviewed their work to ensure it was fair and professionally sound.

The exam covers money laundering methods and the risks each poses to legitimate businesses; how to develop effective anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing defenses; methods of investigating laundering; and the international anti-laundering requirements that companies are expected to adhere to, such as the 40 Recommendations developed by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, the intergovernmental organization that leads the worldwide fight against laundering.