The Digital Era And Its Impact On Money Laundering

This article analyses, from an interdisciplinary and contextual perspective, the issue of money laundering, with a particular focus on its occurrences in the digital context, especially via the use of online platforms known in the legal literature as cyber laundering. The article presents the main ways in which this type of criminal behavior materializes, such as cryptocurrency transactions, online banking, online auctions, and online gambling, thus illustrating the methods used by cybercriminals in order to cover up the illicit origin of the funds. The issue of money laundering portrays, from an economical perspective, a facet of the informal, covert, underground economy, which legally translates into a series of operations aiming to confer an illusion of legality to the profits resulting from criminal activity. The effects of this scourge are destructive for the harmonious functioning of society, distorting the market economy and the competitive market, while generating financial instability and leading to an increase in corruption and organized crime. Within the context of the digital era, this article explores the impact of technology on the evolution of the practice of money laundering and discusses the new methods used in such criminal activity, while simultaneously dealing with the way in which the new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, can be used in order to prevent and counter the practice of money laundering.