Money laundering is the act of concealing the transformation of profits from illegal activities and corruption into ostensibly “legitimate” assets. The dilemma of illicit activities is accounting for the origin of the proceeds of such activities without raising the suspicion of law enforcement agencies. Accordingly, considerable time and effort is put into devising strategies which enable the safe use of those proceeds without raising unwanted suspicion. Implementing such strategies is generally called money laundering. After money has been suitably laundered or “cleaned”, it can be used in the mainstream economy for accumulation of wealth, such as acquisitions of properties, or otherwise spent. Law enforcement agencies of many jurisdictions have set up sophisticated systems in an effort to detect suspicious transactions or activities, and many have set up international cooperative arrangements to assist each other in these endeavours.
In a number of legal and regulatory systems, the term money laundering has become conflated with other forms of financial and business crime, and is sometimes used more generally to include misuse of the financial system (involving things such as securities, digital currencies, credit cards, and traditional currency), including terrorism financing and evasion of international sanctions. Most anti-money laundering laws openly conflate money laundering (which is concerned with source of funds) with terrorism financing (which is concerned with destination of funds) when regulating the financial system.
Some countries treat obfuscation of sources of money as also constituting money laundering, whether it is intentional or by merely using financial systems or services that do not identify or track sources or destinations. Other countries define money laundering in such a way as to include money from activity that would have been a crime in that country, even if the activity was legal where the actual conduct occurred.
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