MONEY LAUNDERING, THE CURRENT FORM OF ORGANIZED CRIME

Abstract

Perpetrators of crimes tend to legalize revenues that are acquired with criminal activities or want to appear it that it comes from some legal jobs, because the fight against crime is directed at the seizure of assets gained by criminal activity and disabling the inclusion of such assets into the legal financial flows. There are many different techniques of money laundering, and common feature of them is that the money passes through three phases: phase of investment, phase of concealment and integration phase. In the investment phase, the illegal profits inserted into the legal financial system. Cash that is acquired with criminal activities then is paid to bank accounts, usually under the pretext of a regular activity. The next step in the process of money laundering is the concealment phase, and it is achieved by transferring funds from one account to the accounts of various banks in the world. In the integration phase, the money is invested in legal business, and then appears as money that comes from legal activities. For those activities of money laundering is most often used liberal banking systems, which are not under the direct control of state authorities. Money laundering has a lot of influence on the economic, political and social structures of each country. The most important consequences of money laundering are: the decline of the legal business of the private sector, impact on exchange rates and interest rates, economic disturbances and instability, reduction of state revenues and weakening of economic control policy, threat of reform programs or privatization, decline in the reputation of the country..