Question

What specific types of evidence will be useful to investigate money laundering?

Answer 1

Money laundering: Money laundering is the process of creating the appearance that large source of money which is originally from illegal source is generated through legitimate source. The Money launderers do use some steps to make it look as if the dirty money is clean and can be legally shown to the government.

Most of the illegal activities are carried out by the mafias and people with damaged track record. The money which cannot be shown to the government, is originally from criminal activity. In order to crack down and control crime, it is very important for any government to investigate and curb down money laundering activities.Recently money laundering is actively used by terrorist organisations to carry out terrorist activities in various parts of the world. Most of the source of funds to these activities are channelised throough money laundering.

The initial step in investigation process of money laundering starts with collecting information and evidences of suspected transactions, or the source could be from any criminal activity. Anyone who is involved in concealing, disguising, converting, transferring, or removing criminal property could be vulnerable to a money laundering charge.

Since information collection is the primary job of the investigator, he needs to collect all the related information about the suspected transaction, and also should collect as much evidences as possible. However, the investigator should focus on certain specific types of evidences, which may be crucial for any investigation process, they are:

Obtain evidences to support financial investigation :

• Previous conviction or bad character of the launderer
• Association with any criminal activity or criminals
• Anti-surveillance tactics
• Unexplained financial activities, like rotating money from one account to other, or suspected huge deposits into bank account.
• All assets and liabilities, income and expenses, lifestyle of the launderer
• Inquiries to bank and collect information about the banking activities
• Search for publicly available information
• Identify the relatives and family friends.
• Suspected transactions from Financially instable countries like Nigeria.