What this means for Canada is an ever more challenging regulatory and law enforcement environment especially during an era of reduced barriers to trade and finance in both North America and Europe. More trade and fewer hurdles are a boon to money launderers looking to use international trade markets as an alternative to ever more vigilant financial institutions. To meet this challenge, there's intriguing work being done in the United States to pinpoint suspicious commercial transactions. Two researchers at Florida International University have developed some software for spotting suspicious money movements through under- or over-invoicing. For example, they discovered the importation of cut emeralds into the United States from Panama at a cost of $974.58 a carat. The average world price is $43.63 per carat. In many cases, there are valid commercial or economic reasons to explain such a variance. But, in this instance, the researchers could find none. What could it mean? Though the case has not been investigated, this might be an instance where a trade deal is used to conceal the movement of money from the United States to a tax haven which has been used in the past by Colombian drug cartels. In the future, I expect, we may see more complex divisions of labour in international money laundering schemes and operations. An example is included in the 1991 RCMP National Drug Estimates: "...some foreign-based trafficking groups are using Canadian bank accounts to secure multi-million dollar payments for drug deals in which Canada was not involved as a source or a consuming country. In such cases, Canada is used not as a laundering center but a clearing-house where organizations settle business debts..."