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This paper aims to illustrate how illegally obtained funds are laundered through raw diamonds in Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

To identify specific money laundering techniques involving raw diamonds, this study used a qualitative content analysis of data collected from 60 semi-standardized interviews with both criminals and prevention experts and a quantitative survey of 200 compliance officers.

Raw diamonds are extraordinarily suitable for money laundering in European German-speaking countries. In particular, they may be used in all three stages of the laundering process, namely, placement, layering and integration.

Because the qualitative findings are based on semi-standardized interviews, their insights are limited to the perspectives of the 60 interviewees.

Identifying gaps in existing anti-money laundering mechanisms should provide compliance officers, law enforcement agencies and legislators with valuable insights into how criminals operate.

While prior studies focus on the methods used by organizations to combat money laundering and how to improve anti-money laundering measures, this paper investigates how money launderers operate to avoid detection, thereby illustrating authentic experiences. Its findings provide valuable insights into the minds of money launderers and combines criminal perspective with that of prevention experts.

Money laundering weakens the role of the construction industry in stimulating economic growth. The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between money laundering on the construction sites and undocumented foreign workers, based on a narrative drawn from a qualitative research.

Throughout the study, qualitative methods, i.e. interviews, site visits and document analysis, were used. However, the data for this paper was primarily derived from an interview. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

The findings show that construction personnel who have access to the business’s financial affairs are the most likely to engage in illicit transactions. The size of the project as well as the multiple layers of organisations involved made it easy for launderers to operate. The appealing commission provided incentives to opportunistic personnel. In this regard, the wages for undocumented workers, which were primarily paid in cash, provided a considerable opportunity for the subcontracting organisations to engage in money laundering.

While the single narrative method with an omniscient narrator allows for the conceptualisation of a human experience with money laundering, the depth of information and interpretations is limited. Emerging qualitative research methods may be incorporated in the future to provide a more extensive information due to the fact that money laundering data is complex and sensitive that few people want to discuss.

The multidisciplinary approach of this research provides a pedagogical way that focuses primarily on the disciplines of construction management and business ethics to demonstrate real-world money laundering practice. Understanding such phenomenon on sites opens up key avenues for future research into developing an anti-money laundering regime for the construction industry.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the incentivised steps criminals take to launder cash while avoiding government’s anti-money laundering (AML) measures.

To illustrate how and when technology is most prominent in the money laundering process, this paper analyses the criminal’s methodological approach to “technology-enhanced money laundering” by examining several high-level examples. To strengthen the theoretical assessment and the overall validity of the findings, the author incorporates details from their own research and professional experience to maximise comprehension of the methodological process that organised criminals and money launderers alike look to undertake when placing illicitly derived cash in the money laundering cycle.

The AML model of “placement, layering and integration” is synonymous with presenting the process of money laundering – in the most basic or generic forms. This paper identifies that the placement stage is a primary stage through which technology is exploited to assist in the entire laundering process.

Using money laundering case studies, this paper identifies that existing AML/countering terrorism financing international perceptions/practices and typological studies are not adequate for presenting an accurate assessment of the process used to undertake money laundering.

This paper provides an examination of the practicalities behind the prevention of money laundering from a compliance and investigative perspective. The paper is of interest to those involved in policy, compliance and investigations associated with money laundering.

Money laundering offences occur worldwide, with recent discussions involving issues related to the low levels of compliance among professional accountants towards the anti-money laundering (AML) regime. Under the regime, professional accountants are required to implement compliance programs (Know Your Customer, Clients Due Diligent, Record Keeping) and to submit any suspicious transaction report encounters to the authorities. Due to the lack of research in this sector, this study aims to examine the compliance determinants towards AML regimes among professional accountants in Malaysia.

Premised on protection motivation theory, a questionnaire was developed and distributed among 1,100 professional accountants. Of which 275 questionnaires were returned and subjected to regression analysis.

Based on the findings, “perceived risk of non-compliance” and “awareness of Anti-Money Laundering Act 2001 and Financial Action Task Force standard” were significantly related to the level of compliance towards the AML regimes. Meanwhile, “compliance cost” did not influence the compliance behaviour of professional accountants. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that awareness programs among the reporting institutions should be enhanced, specifically the professional accountants.

This study recommends the professional bodies particularly professional accountants in Malaysia to establish a blueprint as a guideline for money laundering reporting.

This is one of the pioneer studies looking into AML compliance determinants among the professional accountants in Malaysia. This study will provide insights on the current practices and recommend ways to improve the current AML reporting practices among the professional accountants.

The purpose of this paper is to exemplify how money launderers in European German-speaking countries use deposit boxes to place incriminated funds.

During a qualitative content analysis of 60 semi-standardized expert interviews with both criminals and prevention experts and a quantitative survey of 200 compliance officers, concrete money laundering techniques using deposit boxes were identified.

Deposit boxes may be used to place incriminated funds or prepare for their subsequent placement. Thus, the method is highly suitable to the demands of small-scale money laundering.

The study’s qualitative findings are limited to the perspectives of the 60 interview partners. The interviews were conducted in a semi-standardized fashion.

The present paper aims at identifying gaps in existing anti-money laundering mechanisms to provide compliance officers, law enforcement agencies and legislators with worthwhile insights into the minds of criminals.

The present paper illustrates how money launderers operate to avoid detection, capturing the perspective of the launderer. Thus, the reader is granted access to highly valuable information that is supposed to facilitate the introduction of new anti-money laundering measures. Moreover, it shows how compliance officers view the issue and what they consider to be important to the successful implementation of compliance mechanisms. Moreover, the officers’ statements will exhibit which methods they do and do not engage with on a daily basis.

The aim of the present study is to shed light on the role of legal practitioners, namely, lawyers and notaries, in the fight against money laundering: Are they considered as facilitators or obstacles against money laundering? How does the global and the EU legal framework deal with the legal professionals?

The research follows a deductive approach attempting to respond to questions such as: How do the lawyers’ and notaries’ societies react in front of the anti-money laundering measures that concern them and why? What are the discrepancies between the lawyers’ professional secrecy and the obligations that EU anti-money laundering legislation assigns them?

This study disclosures the response of the European union and international legal and regulatory framework as well as the reflexes of the international and European legal professionals’ associations to this danger. It also demonstrates the reaction of lawyers against European union anti-money laundering legislation, to the point that it limits not only the confidentiality principle but also the position of the European judicial systems to the contradiction between this principle and the lawyers’ obligation to report their suspicions to the authorities.

To fulfil the study goals, it was necessary to overcome some obstacles, like the limitation of existing sources. Indeed, transnational empirical research considering the professionals who facilitate money laundering is narrow. Besides, policymakers and academics only recently expressed more interest in money laundering and its facilitators.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the legal professionals’ role not only in money laundering practices but also in anti-money laundering policies.

The forces of globalisation have had a profound effect on the world's economies and it should come as no surprise that they have given new opportunities for organised crime and new challenges for legal systems and law enforcement. While the phenomenon of organised crime is not new, it has been growing in recent years and is now generating and laundering huge illegal profits, subsequently investing them in legal business. Strategies against organised crime will be shaped by the mental models used to understand it, and anyone whose mental model of organised crime is derived from the Chicago gangsters of the 1920s or the Mafia godfather of cinematic fiction is using the mental model of a bygone era. Organised crime today must be understood using a business model and hence viewed as businesses, producing illicit goods and services, which vary in size and scale on a continuum from small, local businesses to multinational corporations. The business model assists in analysing the structures of organised crime and, by applying it, one can postulate for example that, at the latter end of the continuum, organised crime groups will, like all multinational corporations, have their own managing directors, finance directors and other corporate officers. The unprecedented challenge now facing law enforcement authorities is to develop effective strategies to combat these multinational corporations of organised crime.

The Financial Action Task Force (the chief international agency against money laundering) blacklisted Israel (June 2000) as one of the 15 countries that fail to cooperate in the international efforts to combat money laundering. Soon after, the Israeli Parliament enacted the Prohibition on Money Laundering Law, 5760–2000 (the ‘Law’). The Law has far‐reaching legal, economic and policy implications. This paper attempts to sketch the global backdrop against which the Law was adopted, analyse its provisions, expose its implications and draw attention to its pros and cons. It is structured along the following lines: the first section sets out the international campaign against money laundering. The second section describes the pressures exerted by the international community to persuade Israel to join the club of countries that counteract money‐laundering operations. The third and fourth sections analyse the ratio legis of the Law and its provisions, respectively. In the fifth section an account is provided of the problematic aspects of the Law. The last section provides some conclusions that may be drawn at this early stage.

This paper aims to examine the money laundering vulnerability of private legal practitioners in Tanzania, the involvement of these practitioners in money laundering activities and their role in preventing, detecting and thwarting money laundering and its predicate crimes.

The paper applies the “black-letter” law research approach to describe, examine and analyze the anti-money laundering law in Tanzania. It also uses the “law-in-context” research approach to interrogate the anti-money laundering law and to provide an understanding of factors impacting on the efficacy and readiness of private legal practitioners in Tanzania to tackle money laundering. The review of literature and analysis of statutory instruments and case law, reports of the anti-money laundering authorities and agencies and media reports-generated data are used in this paper. This information was complemented by data from interviews of purposively selected private legal practitioners.

Private legal practitioners in Tanzania are vulnerable to money laundering. There is an emerging evidence that indicates the involvement of some private legal practitioners in the commission of money laundering and/or its predicate crimes. The law designates the legal practitioners as reporting persons and imposes on the obligation to fight against money laundering. Law-related factors and practical challenges undermine the capacity of the legal practitioners to curb money laundering. Additionally, certain hostile perceptions contribute to the legal practitioners’ unwillingness, indifference or opposition against the fight against money laundering.

The paper underscores the need for Tanzania to reform its policy and legal frameworks to create enabling environment for anti-money laundering gatekeepers, including private legal practitioners to partake efficiently in the fight against money laundering. It also underlines the importance of incorporating the principles that govern the private legal practise to enable the practitioners to partake effectively in tackling money laundering.

This paper generates useful information to private legal practitioners, policy makers and academicians on issues relating to money laundering and its control in Tanzania and presents recommendations on possible policy and legal reforms that can be adopted and applied to augment the role of the legal practitioners in Tanzania to combat money laundering.

The lucrative enterprise of money laundering, the threat it poses to the integrity and stability of financial sectors as well as to the democratic societies themselves, and the means to counteract it, all have long been the object of academic debate across the globe. However, interested parties in Israel, such as law enforcement agencies, banks and legal scholars, have not played a vociferous role in this debate, and Parliament for its part has refrained so far from introducing anti‐money‐laundering legislation. Recently a Bill entitled ‘Prohibition of Money Laundering’ (‘the Bill’) has been introduced to the Israeli Parliament. The Bill has passed first reading, and it is cur‐rently being debated in the committee stage before being brought to second and third readings. It is not unlikely that the Bill will crystallise into legislation in the near future. The proposed legislation bears far‐reaching legal, economic and policy implications. It is thus surprising that it has not sparked off an extensive debate in the legal literature. This paper will, hopefully, aid in stimulating such a debate.