But it also offers major new possibilities for international criminals. One of its biggest advantages for cybercrime lies in the ease with which it enables illegal earnings to be transferred around the world at the touch of a button, virtually without trace, and without the criminal having to put in a personal appearance. Large amounts of cash that cannot be accounted for alert law-enforcement agencies to probable criminal activity, and can even be evidence of crime.
Money laundering removes that evidence.
The Internet is virtually uncontrolled, and computer networks are hard to monitor, which means the medium is also ideal for planning crime, even actions such as terrorist attacks. Individual police forces and governments cannot hope to tackle this problem alone. Their concern was directed particularly at the narcotics trade, ahead of a special session on drugs held by the United Nations General Assembly in late June. Indeed, the call for co-operation at the industrialised countries' Summit echoed the findings of a group of law and justice ministers from small Commonwealth states who met in Barbados last August. She describes the Trinidad workshop as the first-ever multilateral effort to address the issue, which is an indication that the fight is only just beginning.