ANTI MONEY LAUNDERING  

Anti-money laundering (AML) refers to the laws, regulations and procedures intended to prevent criminals from disguising illegally obtained funds as legitimate income. Though anti-money laundering laws cover a limited range of transactions and criminal behavior, their implications are far-reaching. For example, AML regulations require banks and other financial institutions that issue credit or accept customer deposits to follow rules that ensure they are not aiding money-laundering.

MONEY LAUNDERING

Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process returns the “clean” money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.

Activities associated with money laundering include: –

• acquiring, using or possessing criminal property;
• handling the proceeds of crime theft, fraud and tax evasion;
• being knowingly involved in any way with criminal or terrorist property;
• investing the proceeds of crimes in other financial products or through the acquisition of property or assets;
• transferring criminal property and financing of terrorist activities;
• placement – physical disposal of cash proceeds derived from illegal activities;
• layering – separating illicit proceeds from their source by creating complex layers of financial transactions designed to disguised the source of the money, subvert the audit trail and provide anonymity;
• integration – creating the impression of apparent legitimacy to criminally derived wealth. In situations where the layering proceeds back into the general financial system and the proceeds appear to be the result of or connected to legitimate business activities.