Money Laundering: Case Studies and Countermeasures

Money laundering is the procedure by which a significant amount of unlawfully gained money, resulted from illegal activities such as drug smuggling and drug trafficking, arms dealing, human trafficking, corruption or other crimes, are transformed into lawful assets resulted from legal activities. If done successfully, money laundering gives its authors the possibility to use the money resulted from illegal activities and give the impression to be derived from legal activities. Money laundering plays a crucial part, as it drives away the diligence of the law-enforcement institutions from the significant volume of income resulted in a short amount of time, from criminal activities. This paper aims to outline different money laundering techniques and issue suitable countermeasures resulting in a more powerful and competent fight against this phenomenon. The methodology used for this paper is made of case studies, relevant to the current topic, retrieved from the web as sources of information. The value of this paper is outlining different money laundering techniques used by the criminal groups, and in the end, issuing recommendations towards actions to be taken in the fight against money laundering by law enforcement and financial institutions.