From Wiki:
Money laundering is the process of changing large amounts of money obtained from crimes, such as drug trafficking, into origination from a legitimate source.
[1] It is a crime in many jurisdictions with varying definitions. It is a key operation of the
underground economy.
In US law it is the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination of illegally gained money. In UK law the
common law definition is wider. The act is defined as
taking any action with property of any form which is either wholly or in part the proceeds of a crime that will disguise the fact that that property is the proceeds of a crime or obscure the beneficial ownership of said property.
In the past, the term "money laundering" was applied only to financial transactions related to
organized crime. Today its definition is often expanded by government and international regulators such as the US
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to mean
any financial transaction which generates an asset or a value as the result of an illegal act, which may involve actions such as
tax evasion or
false accounting. In the UK, it does not even need to involve money, but any
economic good. Courts involve money laundering committed by private individuals, drug dealers, businesses, corrupt officials, members of criminal organizations such as the
Mafia, and even states.
As financial crime has become more complex, and "Financial Intelligence" (
FININT) has become more recognized in combating international crime and terrorism, money laundering has become more prominent in political, economic, and legal debate. Money laundering is
ipso facto illegal; the acts generating the money almost always are themselves criminal in some way (for if not, the money would not need to be laundered).
Modern development
Money laundering is not a crime invented during the
Prohibition era in the United States, but techniques were developed and refined then[
citation needed]. Many methods were devised to disguise the origins of money generated by the sale of illegal
alcohol. After
Al Capone's 1931 conviction for
tax evasion, mobster
Meyer Lansky transferred funds from Florida "Carpet Joints" to accounts overseas. After the 1934
Swiss Banking Act, which created the principle of
bank secrecy, Lansky bought a
Swiss bank into which he could transfer his illegal funds through a complex system of
shell companies, holding companies, and
offshore bank accounts.
In the post-World War II era, legislators found themselves in a quandary as they were confronted with a growing list of commercial, fiscal, and environmental offenses that did not actually cause direct harm to any one identifiable victim; there was no stinking corpse. They decided that confiscating the proceeds of crime would adequately deter potential criminals. Anxious to avoid confiscation, organized criminals now needed to give these huge sums of money not easily consumed or invested in the legal economy without raising eyebrows a patina of legitimacy: they needed to "launder" it. Money laundering has been dubbed the "Achilles heel of organized crime", for it compels mobsters to seek out and co-opt established businessmen and women with highly technical know-how and access to legal institutions like banks to launder their plunder.
[2]
The term "money laundering" does not derive, as is often said, from
Al Capone having used
laundromats to hide ill-gotten gains. It is more likely to mean that dirty money is made clean. At some point in the process there must be a switch between the two; necessarily the art is to keep that switch hidden.[
citation needed]
Meyer Lansky perfected a predecessor of money laundering, "capital flight," transferring his funds to Switzerland and other offshore places. The first reference to the term "money laundering" itself actually appears during the
Watergate scandal. US President
Richard Nixon's "Committee to Re-elect the President" moved dirty campaign contributions to Mexico, then brought the money back through a company in Miami. It was
Britain's The Guardian newspaper that coined the term, referring to the process as "laundering." (See
Jeffrey Robinson's three books on money laundering, The Laundrymen, The Merger and The Sink.)
Money may be laundered through a complex business network of shell companies and trusts based in
tax havens. "
Smurfing" is an example of a money laundering technique.
Examples
Cashing up
A business taking large amounts of small change each week (e.g. a
convenience store) needs to deposit that money in a bank. If its deposits vary greatly for no obvious reason this can draw suspicion; but if the transactions are regular and roughly the same the suspicion is easily discounted. This is the basis of all money laundering, a track record of depositing clean money before slipping through dirty money.
In the United States, for example, cash transactions and deposits of more than $10,000 must be reported by the cashier (the bank etc) as "significant cash transactions" to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
FinCEN, with any other suspicious financial activity identified as "
suspicious activity reports" (SARs).
In other jurisdictions suspicion-based requirements may be placed on financial services employees and firms to report suspicious activity to the authorities.
Captive business
Another method is to start a business whose cash inflow cannot be monitored, and funnel the small change into it and pay taxes on it. But all bank employees are trained to be constantly on the lookout for transactions that seem to be trying to get around reporting requirements. To avoid suspicion, shell companies should deal directly with the public, perform some service (not provide physical goods), and have a business that reasonably would accept cash as a matter of course. Dealing directly with the public in cash gives a plausible reason for not having a record of customers.
For example, it is quite reasonable to think that a hairstylist is paid in cash and, even if she knows her customer's names, does not know their bank details. A record of a haircut must ostensibly be accepted as
prima facie evidence. Service businesses have the advantage of the anonymity of resources but the disadvantage that they must deal in cash. A business that sells computers has to account for the computers, whereas the hairstylist does not have to produce the cut hair, but the receipt for the computer, even if inflated, exists that for the haircut probably does not. It is of course also possible to invent customers, purely for the purpose of accepting money from them.