What the Profession Needs to Know about Money Laundering.
By Wm. Dennis Huber and Larry Crumbley
There are difficulties in measuring funds channeled into financing terrorist organizations and activities worldwide. Various sources estimate this funding to be between $590 billion and $1.5 trillion through money laundering. PwC suggests that “money laundering transactions are estimated at 2% to 5% global GDP, or roughly $1-2 trillion annually.”
However, financing terrorist organizations and activities is not necessarily the result of money laundering. Financing terrorist organizations and activities may be accomplished by reverse money laundering, or “money dirtying” which may make financing terrorist organizations and activities even more difficult to estimate.
Just as evidence of fraud cannot be ignored, so too evidence of financing terrorist organizations can no longer be ignored.
The goal of money-launderers is, like that of a corporate enterprise, to maximize profits and reduce risk while the goal of terrorists, on the other hand, is to further a political agenda or ideology, or to destroy or kill with no regard to profits and with little regard for risk.
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