Money Laundering and corruption - Essay Example

Another important aspect of Money Laundering is that it is ipso facto illegal i.e. the acts that produce the money are always criminal in one or the other. Now in simple words when some criminal activity generates great and heavy and huge amount of profits then that particular group of people involved must think of a way to take care of the funds without gaining attention. Criminals control their large amount of funds by not telling the correct source, moving the money to a place where they won’t get any attention and some even change the format.

Criminals move their money between various banks, financial instruments and they keep on changing the size and shape of their holdings by using distinct currencies and also by accumulating to and subtracting from their funds so that it becomes more difficult and extremely hard to identify. Money laundering is basically an intimidation to the better functioning of our financial system and at the same time it can also be regarded as the Achilles heel of the criminal activities.(Web: Fatfagi) It is a widely known fact that Money Laundering is prevalent and unavoidable in Europe.

The EU (European Union) which is a political and an economic union has 27 countries which are located primarily in Europe. Now corruption and Money Laundering is at the highest level in Europe. To control this, the EU has come up with various policies, law and regulations but to no use.  For example there is FATF (The Financial Action Task Force) which is an intergovernmental group. It issued a list of countries recently who fail to keep a track of the financial crime. Then there is MONEYVAL which was previously known as PC-R-EV.

This basically was established to perform assessment exercises (both self and mutual) of the money laundering activities in Europe. It also reviews the procedures of The Financial Action Task Force. There is a