New Frontiers of Criminal Liability: Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime

Abstract

The salience of money laundering as a social and economic issue merits some modest scepticism. First, most crime is and will remain for the foreseeable future local and ill‐organised. The only connection that most of the young people and adults who come before most judges most of the time have with international organised crime is the remote supply of the ganja that they smoke, and the fact that drugs — mostly heroin, cocaine and amphetamines — increase their rate of offending and make it harder for them to give up crime. Although there is room for debate about the proportionate and creative ways of dealing with drug use among the young, it remains the case that there is a heavy‐end crime problem with which judges, law officers and politicians have to deal. It is difficult to write rationally about trends in organised crime and about rational international responses to it. The only people who are really on top of this particular market are the successful criminals themselves, including the professionals — accountants and lawyers — who knowingly assist in laundering the proceeds of crime, and who are increasingly required by the front‐line criminals as our controls on cash deposits get tighter. Nevertheless, this paper discusses the relevance to money laundering and proceeds of crime of corporate criminal liability and analogous forms of imposing ‘due diligence’ penalties.

Citation

Levi, M. (2000), "New Frontiers of Criminal Liability: Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime", Journal of Money Laundering Control, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 223-232. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb027233