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During the 1980s, the fight against economic crime, including money laundering, was already very high on the political agenda in most of the European states. According to different studies, organised crime was controlling major parts of the economy in some Eastern European countries, infiltrating the Western economies and investing, for example, in real estate on the Mediterranean coast and in the major European cities. There was a growing awareness that economic crime has an evident influence on the rise of organised crime and that combating money laundering is one of the most effective means in the fight against this form of criminal activity.

‘Recovering the Proceeds of Crime’, a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit of the Cabinet Office, observed that, historically, there have been very few prosecutions for money laundering in England and Wales. Indeed, in the 12‐year period 1987 to 1998, there were only 357 prosecutions. By way of comparison, in 1995 there were 2,034 prosecutions for money laundering in the USA alone. Given that it is generally accepted there is a significant amount of money laundering in the UK, why is the number of prosecutions so low? There are, arguably, four principal factors which have an impact on the prosecution rate for any criminal offence and each of the four affects the prosecution rate for money laundering.