Money Laundering

There are between 700,000 and 1,000,000 electronic funds transfers undertaken world-wide every day.

The vast majority of these are legitimate business to business, business to person, person to person, government to business or government to person (and all visa versa) transactions. But mixed into this plethora of legitimate activity are the funds derived from the proceeds of crime.

These electronic transfers are part of the international washing machine that takes in dirty money (the proceeds of crime) in one place and spins out apparently genuine monetary transactions for value at another location.

Do the launderers have the upper hand?

Undoubtedly!

The problem for the money launders (a “crim”[criminal] by any other name) is that so successful have they been at their “craft” that international terrorist organisations have started to use the techniques and channels used to launder proceeds of crime, drawing the unwanted attention of international law enforcement.

Cheating on your taxes through black market trading  is one thing; using that same cheat system to kill, maim and injure hundreds of thousands around the world is clearly another.

Governments around the world have united to stamp out the processes of organised crime that permit and facilitate money laundering through the use of complex software applications, physical restrictions on transportation of cash and reporting of suspicious transactions by everyone from banks to trade professionals.

In the experience of Forensic Accounting Services, money laundering in New Zealand has revolved around two distinct areas; proceeds of street crime (usually drug money) and white collar crime (usually fraud but also tax evasion).

While the process of laundering is simple in theory, there are critical points that are vulnerable to detection and investigation. Through careful analysis of transactions, the persons involved and the activities in which they have engaged, our Financial Investigators trace proceeds of crime to detect the perpetrators of the schemes, the methods they use and to trace the proceeds of that crime with a view, where possible, to recovery.