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Money laundering is the practice of engaging in finance/financial transactions in order to conceal the identity, source, and/or destination of illegally gained money, and is a main operation of the underground economy.
In the past, the term "money laundering" was applied only to financial transactions related to organized crime. Today its definition is often expanded by government regulators such as the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to encompass any financial transaction which generates an asset or a value as the result of an illegal act, which may involve actions such as tax evasion or false accounting. As a result, the illegal activity of money laundering is now recognized as potentially practiced by individuals, small and large businesses, corrupt officials, members of criminal organization organized crime such as drug dealers or the Mafia, and even corrupt states, through a complex business network network of shell companies and trusts based in Offshore Financial Centre offshore tax havens.
Money laundering is a process whereby the origin of funds generated by illegal means is concealed (drug trafficking, gun smuggling, corruption, etc.). The objective of the operation, which usually takes places in several stages, consists in making the capital and assets that are illegally gained seem as though they are derived from a legitimate source, and inserting them into economic circulation. Money laundering is not a new phenomenon: it's as old as crime itself. Criminals have always endeavored to conceal the origin of illegally generated funds in order to erase all trace of their wrongdoings. Nevertheless, the forms and dimensions of this type of crime have evolved in recent ye ...