Raising Questions and Finding Answers: Money Laundering in Light of Three Theories

Globalization and technology have raised a complete new prospective of trade and finance flows across the globe. Money laundering is one of the biggest obstacles for creating a safe and effective operating international financial system. It is considered now the third largest “business†in the word and has very deep political and economic implications. Unfortunately money laundering is more then only that, and the reasons why, would be modestly explored by this article. This article approach to money laundering will be from a different prospective, and will try to go to the core of the theoretical understanding, for then trying to explore and give suggestions for the practical issues as they have been argued by many scholars, legal and financial experts. This article will try to understand better money laundering by addressing common aspects with other three theories, that among the others, I find particularly interesting because they share common or diametrically opposite elements. The legislator in money laundering was worried by criminalizing this offense not only because of the moral blameworthiness or the harm caused by looking in the past, for what it relates to the underlying offense and its danger, but mostly for the future fear of generating criminality and further wrongful conducts and harm. Preventing further criminality meets perfectly with all consequentialist reasons of imposing punishment. This view of money laundering as a “harm generator†or “wrongness generator†, is the most convincing about the real reasons of criminalization.