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Money laundering: Global scourge
An extract from Nick Kochan's latest
book - The
Washing Machine |
Our security depends on it. Our
way of doing trade with trust is based on it. Global economic
activity with nations relies on it. Money must be earned
and spent fairly and openly. By the same token, money that
is earned illegally or is unaccountable, must be excluded
from the economic system. Its possessors must be apprehended.
That is the money laundering mantra. Those who wage the war
against economic crime are working harder than ever to stem
the tide of black money as acquisitive crime threatens to
get out of control.
The criminal who possesses black money and wants to pass it off as legitimate
must fabricate an explanation to make the source look genuine. These tricksters
make friends with corrupt elements in the financial system. They will hide
their money so that it becomes untraceable to those who may want to hunt it.
As more people or financial institutions handle money with dirty origins, those
origins can be lost. And criminals are caught and convicted by the dirty money
they possess.
So who are the elements in our
society who close their eyes to criminal money? Most are
those who committed the crime in the first place. There are
four key groups. They are global corporations engaged in
fraud; corrupt governments and their politicians who accept
bribes; organized criminals who trade in drugs and other
illegal goods; and terrorists. These are nebulous forces,
and there will be those who say much talk of global money
laundering is fuelled by paranoia and even hysteria. 'The
Washing Machine', Nick Kochan's investigative book on financial
crime, shows that tyrants have triumphed by having their
money laundered, drug gangs have ruined countries by passing
their money through complicit banks, terrorists have waged
wars on the financial system to fund their outrages and companies
have made themselves available to organized criminals in
a Faustian laundering pact. Laundering is as sinister as
it is ubiquitous.
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| Copyright:
Nick Kochan 'The Washing Machine, 2005 |
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