Sri Lanka, March 1 -- A sign outside a laundry in New York City had a frivolously flippant slogan: "We launder dirty clothes, not dirty money."

And a 2019 movie titled Laundromat, based on a book Secrecy World by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jake Bernstein, exposed the byzantine world of money laundering.

That's the insidiously darker side of the world's financial system - with millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains finding safety in offshore banks - a crime perpetrated on a global scale, says a High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI).

Ibrahim Mayaki, FACTI co-chair and former prime minister of Niger points out that closing loopholes that allow money...