An A-Z of money laundering
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Laundering ill-gotten gains is of necessity a murky business, and even the professionals - on both sides of the fence, legally speaking - take years to get to grips with it. The explosion of interest in how terrorist groups fund their activities has added new concepts and ideas to the mix, muddying the water further. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that the two are identical. Laundering money and financing terrorism may share some techniques - but they are still very different activities. On the one hand, money laundering is all about hiding the proceeds of criminal - or at least illegitimate - activity. This could be anything: the biggest amounts, probably hundreds of billions of dollars each year, stem from the global narcotics trade, but bank robbers, embezzlers, fraudsters, tax dodgers - not to mention corrupt public servants and politicians - all need some way of making their money look legal when its origin is otherwise. More : news.bbc.co.uk |