Vincent Ntema Sazita
Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, often obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source.
It is a crime in many jurisdictions, with varying definitions. It is usually a key operation of organised crime. Money laundering embraces practices of engaging in financial transactions that aim to conceal the identity, source or destination of illegally gained money.
So many people boast to be rich, and these have passed through the doors of money laundering.
Money laundering is categorised in many forms such as those committed by private individuals, drug dealers, businesses, corrupt officials, members of criminal organisations such as the Mafia, and even states. A state is a natural entity, which owns the people, government, political parties, all geographical features and creatures within its reaches and enclosures.
The first state to be established with the government was the Garden of Eden. All states of the world as we know them today were lying unoccupied.
The state cannot be owned by a government, party or individuals as their own.
It is instead the state that owns all these since they found it existing when they crept into it. The state, the government and political parties inclusive of businesses, humans, companies, small to medium enterprises, procurement, and financial institutions are today used as properties or forms of money laundering for certain individuals to advantage themselves.
No man will ever become rich from nowhere unless they have passed through two phases and these are the doors of money laundering or have been blessed with such wealth by God or have with the aide of God using their talents and get hold of such wealth.
Where God is involved and is the leader of the source of your wealth, you will walk and pass through the doors of applying knowledge, wisdom, understanding and hard-work to achieve it. The hard work that you apply in money laundering feeds your physical wellbeing but not your soul and spirit.
Financial crimes have become more complex and thus attracting more recognisable ways in trying to combat international crime and terrorism.
As such, money laundering is more prominent in political, economic, and legal debates today. In the true sense of it, money laundering is ipso facto illegal; the acts generating the money almost always are themselves criminal in some way (for if not, the money would not need to be laundered). Ipso facto is a Latin phrase, directly translated as “by the fact itself”, which means that a specific phenomenon is a direct consequence, a resultant effect, of the action in question, instead of being brought about by a previous action. According to the United States Treasury Department (2015), money laundering is the process of making illegally gained proceeds (dirty money) appear legal (clean).
On the business side, effects of money laundering may lead into the business entity losing reputation in society. These kinds of businesses continue making headlines for all the wrong reasons, thus in a way, money laundering being regarded as criminalising the business entity for scandalous and reputational risks and major damages. Business entities may be at risk by incurring penalties, punishments and imprisonments. Revenue expected to flow in is highly flawed and affected.
Effects on the economy are among others, making economic safety nets less productive, leading to lower levels of money and tax revenue for the country. Individuals who aim to make profits turn enterprises that were at first productive into sterile ones for the sake of laundering money. Big organisations that are involved in money laundering aspire for unfair business advantage, because they can afford to sell products for cheaper prices on grounds that their primary purpose is to clean money. This means smaller businesses lose customers, as they cannot compete. More importantly though, on a larger scale, third world countries find it difficult to break the scourge of corruption, because they have less money to spend on anti-money laundering (AML) regulations. This will result in criminals to be more likely targeting weaker government and private systems, resulting in them losing much money to accounts of money laundering. The government will be unable to source out money to prevent it.
The effects of money laundering on society are massive, because governments spend more money on introducing and providing anti-money laundering regulations and in ensuring law enforcement through reactions from such activities and society. Public spending by government decreases and people at grassroots level will suffer as a result.
Criminals in such cases will make business fraternities less productive, which results to a drop in the quality of services offered to customers and the general public. Because of this, neither customers nor innocent businesses will ever trust some organisations to deliver the services that are needed by society.
What is vital and in fact, the crux of the matter is that corruption and the laundering of money can spread like a wildfire. It so happens that when it starts, business fraternities, the public and government employees are encouraged to go for it, as it becomes a limelight for their survival. Governments should ensure that criminals are by far margins not promoted to continue committing further crimes and corrupt evils of society. Importantly though, every time money laundering is prevalent in a society, everyone loses out except those involved in it and are benefitting fairly well from it.
Therefore, governments are called upon to ensure they draft effective anti-money laundering regulations for business fraternities to comply with at all costs and all times and not through lip services only.
Governments should regard compliance to regulations of anti-money laundering as their utmost interest because it is in everyone’s interest for a safe and transparent society for our generation and the generations to come.