Money laundering can easiest be described as the process in which income from criminal activities and/or stolen money and other assets are manipulated in such a way that they occur to look as if they have been acquired fairly and legally.

Real "Money Laundering" can therefore not occur without the commitment of a criminal offence, in which the proceeds are being laundered. So far everything is pretty easy to understand.

The biggest hurdle law enforcement agencies around the world are facing right now is that most of the times it is harder, not to say impossible to prove which underlying crime that is behind the money laundering case, whilst it is much easier to identify the money laundering process itself.

The conclusion we can draw from this is simply that most criminal activities can not exist without money laundering. This is the truth in many criminal activities such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, prostitution and illegal gambling etc. This is why money laundering in itself has become a punishable crime. The simple logic applied is that if we can not get them for the first offence, we can always bust them for money laundering.

Due to this new and very effective legislation it is nowadays much easier to catch corporations and individuals involved in tax evasion or tax avoidance.

Lost Focus

In their hunt to identify criminals by simply looking at possible money laundering cases, the authorities has lost focus on the investigation around the existence, or non-existence of the underlying crime.

Ownership of large amounts of cash in combination with a whole range of other "suspicious actions" such as operating offshore bank accounts or companies can now result in asset confiscation and prosecution.

This is very an unfortunate scenario even though we all know that most crimes cannot exist without the help of the money laundering process we also need to bear in mind that the same financial pattern and instruments that are used in connection with money laundering, can and are also are used in many legitimate cases.