Banks and other financial institutions based in the Gulf face a significant threat from fraud and money laundering. This is the view of a money laundering specialist based at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). Terry Douglas, a senior consultant and trainer for compliance consultancy, CCL Limited, said there is a significant danger that many employees in the Dubai financial sector have been merely following procedures and not really looking at the considerable risk of their firm being exploited by criminals. He cited recent study findings that US$5 billion of money laundered results in GDP losses of between US$5.63 billion and US$11.26 billion. The study also claimed this amount of laundering would result in the loss of 125,000 to 250,000 jobs in the UAE economy. Mr Douglas, who trains staff in anti-money laundering practices throughout the UAE, said: "The Middle East still has a very cash-oriented business community, whereas this has largely been replaced by electronic transactions in other parts of the world. This has made it much more difficult to regulate money laundering here, as large amounts of cash are legitimately being transacted every day. This cash may well be dirty money, but the volumes of transactions can make it harder to identify criminal activity. "Where the regulator has not taken any high profile action against firms so far for failing to comply, it is early days. However, we expect the regulator here to take a comparable approach to the Financial Services Authority in the UK and there have been numerous damaging high-profile fines there." He anticipated a series of new laws to strengthen the jurisdiction's anti money laundering regime.