Until late in the last Century, this modern crime wasn’t even illegal.
Violent crime, drug dealing, corruption and theft are all more likely to catch the public eye.
Money laundering is not a favorite of headline writers, especially since not everyone knows what it is. In the United States, it only became a crime in 1986. But now, regulators around the world consider it an extremely serious issue.
Money laundering is the process of disguising the origin of income through a series of transactions designed to give the cash an apparently legitimate source, both to hide criminal revenues and – just as often – to avoid taxes.
Criminal enterprise, like other sectors, has grown greatly in the last decades, so the amount of laundered money re-introduced into the formal economy is enormous. It’s impossible to attach exact figures to the phenomenon since, when it’s done successfully, few traces remain.
In 2009, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated the worldwide impact at around 1.6 trillion dollars. The techniques employed can range from small, unsophisticated dodges to complex international schemes hiding billions.
It has been suggested that the term “money laundering” comes from the gangster Al Capone, who set up laundries where he mixed ill-gotten gains with legitimate revenues.
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Until late in the last Century, this modern crime wasn’t even illegal.
Violent crime, drug dealing, corruption and theft are all more likely to catch the public eye.
