Webinar 56/2018 Money laundering - Criminal enablers

Financial, legal and other professionals play more significant role in international money laundering than ever before.

Lawyers, notaries, auditors, tax advisers, accountants, trust and company service providers, real estate agencies, credit and financial institutions, either knowingly or unwittingly, are involved in money laundering providing essential services to criminals who could not hide their criminal proceeds without the cooperation of professionals. Some of these professionals, given their trusted gatekeeper status, intentionally and knowingly misuse the absence of direct supervision to launder funds themselves and/or act as intermediaries in helping others to launder. Active criminal infiltration into the ranks of professionals or the subornation of existing professionals are key factors of organised crime success. The increased criminal exploitation of professionals is the natural consequence of the evolution in the money laundering regulatory framework. The controls in the financial system force criminals to find alternative and more concealed ways of laundering the proceeds of crime. Law enforcement must follow the criminals and punish also those who deliberately support them by hiding and cleaning their dirty money.

This training event aims to describe how law enforcement can detect and track down those financial and legal service providers who knowingly and intentionally support criminals by offering professional money laundering services. This is a very exciting, actual but barely covered subject due to the difficulty and complexity of evidence collection and the required specialist knowledge.