Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, underground sex work, terrorism, corruption, embezzlement, and Treason, and converting the funds into a seemingly legitimate source, usually through a front organization. As financial crime has become more complex and financial intelligence is more important in combating international crime and terrorism, money laundering has become a prominent political, economic, and legal debate. Money laundering is ipso facto illegal; the acts generating the money almost always are themselves criminal in some way.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes information about financial transactions to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.
The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (BSA), also known as the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, is a U.S. law requiring financial institutions in the United States to assist U.S. government agencies in detecting and preventing money laundering. Specifically, the act requires financial institutions to keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, file reports if the daily aggregate exceeds $10,000, and report suspicious activity that may signify money laundering, tax evasion, or other criminal activities.
Structuring, also known as smurfing in banking jargon, is the practice of executing financial transactions such as making bank deposits in a specific pattern, calculated to avoid triggering financial institutions to file reports required by law, such as the United States' Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Internal Revenue Code section 6050I. Structuring may be done in the context of money laundering, fraud, and other financial crimes. Legal restrictions on structuring are concerned with limiting the size of domestic transactions for individuals.
In financial regulation, a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) or Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) is a report made by a financial institution about suspicious or potentially suspicious activity as required under laws designed to counter money laundering, financing of terrorism and other financial crimes. The criteria to decide when a report must be made varies from country to country, but generally, it is any financial transaction that either a) does not make sense to the financial institution; b) is unusual for that particular client; or c) appears to be done only for the purpose of hiding or obfuscating another, separate transaction. The report is filed with that country's Financial Intelligence Unit, which is typically a specialist agency designed to collect and analyse transactions and then report these to relevant law enforcement teams.
Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) is an Australian government financial intelligence agency responsible for monitoring financial transactions to identify money laundering, organised crime, tax evasion, welfare fraud and terrorism financing. AUSTRAC was established in 1989 under the Financial Transaction Reports Act 1988. It implements in Australia the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), which Australia joined in 1990.
A currency transaction report (CTR) is a report that U.S. financial institutions are required to file with FinCEN for each deposit, withdrawal, exchange of currency, or other payment or transfer, by, through, or to the financial institution which involves a transaction in currency valued at more than $10,000. Used in this context, currency means the coin and/or paper money of any country that is designated as legal tender by the country of issuance. Currency also includes U.S. silver certificates, U.S. notes, Federal Reserve notes, and official foreign bank notes. Contrary to popular misunderstanding, these reports do not apply to, and are not used for, non-currency transactions such as checks, nor for electronic transfers such as wire and ACH/EFT.
The USA PATRIOT Act was passed by the United States Congress in 2001 as a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. It has ten titles, each containing numerous sections. Title III: International Money Laundering Abatement and Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 is actually an act of Congress in its own right as well as being a title of the USA PATRIOT Act, and is intended to facilitate the prevention, detection and prosecution of international money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The title's sections primarily amend portions of the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 and the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.
A payable-through account (PTA) is a demand deposit account through which banking agencies located in the United States extend cheque writing privileges to the customers of other institutions, often foreign banks.
Anti-Money Laundering (AML) refers to a set of policies and practices to ensure that financial institutions and other regulated entities prevent, detect, and report financial crime and especially money laundering activities. Anti-Money Laundering is often paired with the action against terrorism financing, or Combating the Financing of Terrorism, using the acronym AML-CFT. In addition arrangements intended to ensure that banks and other relevant firms duly report suspicious transactions, the AML policy framework includes financial intelligence units and relevant law enforcement operations.
The USA PATRIOT Act was passed by the United States Congress in 2001 as a response to the September 11 attacks in 2001. It has ten titles, with the third title written to prevent, detect, and prosecute international money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada is the national financial intelligence agency of Canada. FINTRAC was established in 2000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act to facilitate detection and investigation of money laundering. Its mandate was expanded in December 2001 following amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act to also disclose financial intelligence to other Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies with respect to suspected terrorist financing. FINTRAC's mandate was further expanded in 2006 under Bill C-25 to enhance the client identification, record-keeping and reporting measures, established a registration regime for money services businesses and foreign exchange dealers, and created new offences for not registering.
Financial intelligence (FININT) is the gathering of information about the financial affairs of entities of interest, to understand their nature and capabilities, and predict their intentions. Generally the term applies in the context of law enforcement and related activities. One of the main purposes of financial intelligence is to identify financial transactions that may involve tax evasion, money laundering or some other criminal activity. FININT may also be involved in identifying financing of criminal and terrorist organisations. Financial intelligence can be broken down into two main areas, collection and analysis. Collection is normally done by a government agency, known as a financial intelligence organisation or Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). The agency will collect raw transactional information and Suspicious activity reports (SAR) usually provided by banks and other entities as part of regulatory requirements. Data may be shared with other countries through intergovernmental networks. Analysis, may consist of scrutinizing a large volume of transactional data using data mining or data-matching techniques to identify persons potentially engaged in a particular activity. SARs can also be scrutinized and linked with other data to try to identify specific activity.
The British Columbia Lottery Corporation is a Canadian Crown corporation that manages all legal gambling products in British Columbia including lottery tickets, casinos and online gambling. It is based in Kamloops, with a secondary office in Vancouver. It consists of three business units: Lottery, Casino and eGaming. Its annual revenues exceed CDN $1.6 billion. It has 890 direct employees. Its service providers, who run casinos on its behalf under contract, have an additional 8,300 employees.
Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the United States federal law enforcement agency responsible for investigating potential criminal violations of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes, such as money laundering, currency transaction violations, tax-related identity theft fraud and terrorist financing that adversely affect tax administration. While other federal agencies also have investigative jurisdiction for money laundering and some Bank Secrecy Act violations, IRS-CI is the only federal agency that can investigate potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code, in a manner intended to foster confidence in the tax system and deter violations of tax law. Criminal Investigation is a division of the Internal Revenue Service, which in turn is a bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury.
Anti-money laundering (AML) software is software used in the finance and legal industries to help companies comply with the legal requirements for financial institutions and other regulated entities to prevent or report money laundering activities. AML software can facilitate faster and more accurate compliance and investigations.
Operation Greenback was a Miami, Florida-based, multi-agency U.S. government task force targeting money laundering connected to drug trafficking.
A money services business (MSB) is a legal term used by financial regulators to describe businesses that transmit or convert money. The definition was created to encompass more than just banks which normally provide these services to include non-bank financial institutions.
United States virtual currency law is financial regulation as applied to transactions in virtual currency in the U.S. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has regulated and may continue to regulate virtual currencies as commodities. The Securities and Exchange Commission also requires registration of any virtual currency traded in the U.S. if it is classified as a security and of any trading platform that meets its definition of an exchange.
Financial Intelligence Unit—India (FIU-IND) is an organisation under the Department of Revenue, Government of India which collects financial intelligence about offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. It was set up in November 2004 and reports directly to the Economic Intelligence Council (EIC) headed by the Finance Minister.
