Aligning national laws is considered the key to making the convention work. By ratifying the convention, countries will have to enact laws that criminalize behavior in all four categories. Ensuring that these offences are uniformly criminalized will make it much more difficult, for criminal groups, to seek safe havens. Today, national laws vary widely on a number of offences. For example, many countries treat money laundering the practice of channelling the proceeds of criminal activity into legal accounts differently.
Some countries only have laws that pertain to the proceeds from drug transactions.
Under the convention, the proceeds of all criminal activities would be covered. The convention provides a broad definition of transnationality, which will provide law enforcement authorities considerable possibilities in using the treaty to track and apprehend criminals. It defines a crime as transnational if it is committed in more than one State, if it takes place in one State but is planned or controlled from another, if it is committed in one State by a criminal group that operates in several countries, or if the effects of an offence committed in one country are substantial in another. Criminalizing Organized Crime Countries must criminalize participation in an organized criminal group, money laundering, corruption, and obstruction of justice. Under the convention, participating in an organized crime groups, is defined as belonging to any structured group of three or more people acting together to commit a serious crime to obtain some financial or material benefit.