The rise of global financial markets makes money laundering easier than ever - countries with bank-secrecy laws are directly connected to countries with bank-reporting laws, making it possible to anonymously deposit "dirty" money in one country and then have it transferred to any other country for use.
Money laundering happens in almost every country in the world, and a scheme typically involves transferring money through several countries in order to obscure its origins.
Money laundering, at its simplest, is the act of making money that comes from Source A look like it comes from Source B. In practice, criminals are trying to disguise the origins of money obtained through illegal activities so it looks like it was obtained from legal sources. Otherwise, they can't use the money because it would connect them to the criminal activity, and law-enforcement officials would seize it.
The most common types of criminals who need to launder money are drug traffickers, embezzlers, corrupt politicians and public officials, mobsters, terrorists and con artists.
The basic money laundering process has three steps:
Placement
At this stage, the launderer inserts the dirty money into a legitimate financial institution. This is often in the form of cash bank deposits. This is the riskiest stage of the laundering process because large amounts of cash are pretty conspicuous, and banks are required to report high-value transactions.
Layering
Layering involves sending the money through various financial transactions to change its form and make it difficult to follow. Layering may consist of several bank-to-bank transfers, wire transfers between different accounts in different names in different countries, making deposits and withdrawals to continually vary the amount of money in the accounts, changing the money's currency, and purchasing high-value items (boats, houses, cars and diamonds) to change the form of the money. This is the most complex step in any laundering scheme, and it's all about making the original dirty money as hard to trace as possible.
Integration
At the integration stage, the money re-enters the mainstream economy in legitimate-looking form - it appears to come from a legal transaction. This may involve a final bank transfer into the account of a local business in which the launderer is "investing" in exchange for a cut of the profits, the sale of a yacht bought during the layering stage or the purchase of a $10 million screwdriver from a company owned by the launderer. At this point, the criminal can use the money without getting caught. It's very difficult to catch a launderer during the integration stage if there is no documentation during the previous stages.
Money laundering is a crucial step in the success of drug trafficking and terrorist activities, not to mention white collar crime, and there are countless organizations trying to get a handle on the problem.
In the USA the Department of Justice, the State Department, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency all have divisions investigating money laundering and the underlying financial structures that make it work.
Because global financial systems play a major role in most high-level laundering schemes, the international community is fighting money laundering through various means, including the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), which in 2011 had 34 member states and 20 collaborating countries. The United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund also have anti-money-laundering divisions.
Ex. 1Find pairs of synonyms in A and B.
A: rise, transfer, happen, origin, seize, legitimate, stage, underlying, scheme, division;
B: take place, department, emergence, source, project, legal, step, move, confiscate, supportive.
Ex. 2 Find pairs of antonyms in A and B.
A: countless, dirty, legal, insert, conspicuous, hard, previous, disguise;
B: unmask, clean, withdraw, limited, easy, criminal, following, obscure.
Ex. 3 Insert the preposition (where necessary).
соединять с чем-либо connect ….. something
переводить в какое-либо место transfer ….. somewhere
состоять из чего-либо consist ….. something
происходить из какого-либо места come ….. somewhere
Ex. 4 Ask 5 questions on the content of the text.
Ex. 5 Translate the text.
Ex. 6 Make a brief report on how money laundering works.