Combating money laundering and financing of terrorism ; one for all, all for one

Abstract

Until a few years ago no one had heard of money laundering. This does not mean that what today is known as money laundering did not exist at the time. It did exist; because whenever crime generated substantial cash proceeds, the criminal needed to deflect attention from himself as the possible offender and therefore he could not suddenly go around dispensing largesse and spending money for which he could not provide a plausible, lawful explanation. He needed to conceal the origin of his wealth and to give apparent legitimacy to it. In other words he needed to launder his money to make it look clean. Terrorist acts, especially those having the capability of inflicting mass destruction as that of September 11 2001, in New York, 2002 in Bali, 2003 in Casablanca, March 11 2004 in Spain and that of July 7 2005, in London and the recently uncovered plans in the UK246 , need to be financed. The techniques to finance terrorism have to date been found not to be very different from the techniques to launder criminal proceeds. The perspective is different. In money laundering, the techniques used are intended to conceal the origin of funds of a criminal source. In the financing of terrorism the same techniques are used to conceal the destination of what could very well be funds of lawful origin.