OVERVIEW

Money laundering is a crime that can have destructive and devastating effects upon both national stability and communities. As a crime, money laundering is closely related to the business and financial-service sectors, which act as the media through which these offenses are carried out. Efforts to combat money laundering, therefore, should involve nipping such criminal activity in the bud before it enters the financial bloodstream of these sectors of the economy.

Money-laundering can be simply defined as a process of transforming the proceeds of crime into ostensibly legitimate money or other assets. This is usually achieved through the utilization of business or financial-service institution facilities in order to disguise the origin of illegal money or assets. Such facilities can include loan repayments, property purchases, currency exchanges, and the like. While the term "money-laundering" is itself decades old, money laundering as a criminal offense has gradually evolved into a highly sophisticated type of crime. Money laundering now utilizes highly sophisticated and complex techniques in a bid to stop the origins of such funds being traced.