Pelaburan wang haram

Pelaburan wang haram adalah proses mengubah jumlah besar wang diperolehi dari jenayah serius, seperti penyeludupan dadah, ke dalam keasalan dari sebuah sumber yang sah. Ia adalah jenayah dalam banyak bidang kuasa denga pelbagai takrifan. Ia merupakan suatu operasi utama ekonomi bawah tanah.

Dalam undang-undang AS ia adalah amalan melibatkan urusan kewangan untuk menyembunyikan pengenalan, sumber, atau destinasi wang yang diperolehi secara haram. Dalam undang-undang UK takrifan common law adalah lebih luas. Kelakuan ini ditakrifkan sebagai mengambil apa-apa tindakan dengan harta milik dalam mana-mana bentuk yang sama ada keseluruhannya atau sebahagiannya hasil jenayah yang akan menyamarkan fakta bahawa harta milik itu adalah hasil jenayah atau mengaburkan kepemilikan bermanfaatan harta milik yang dikatakan.

Pada masa lalu, istilah "pelaburan wang haram" telah digunakan hanya pada urusan kewangan berkaitan dengan jenayah terancang. Kini takrifannya sering diperluas oleh kerajaan dan pengawal atur antarabangsa seperti Office of the Comptroller of the Currency AS untuk bermakna mana-mana urusan kewangan yang menghasilkan aset atau suatu nilai disebabkan tindakan haram, yang mungkin melibatkan tindakan seperti pengelakan cukai atau perakaunan palsu. Di UK, ia malah tidak perlu melibatkan wang, tetapi mana-mana barang ekonomi. Mahkamah-mahkamah melibatkan pelaburan wang haram dilakukan oleh individu peribadi, pengedar dadah, perniagaan, pegawai rasuah, ahli pertubuhan jenayah seperti Mafia, dan juga negeri-negeri.

Apabila jenayah kewangan menjadi lebih kompleks, dan "Financial Intelligence" (FININT) telah menjadi lebih diakui dalam memerangi jenayah dan keganasan antarabangsa, pelaburan wang haram telah menjadi lebih menonjol dalam debat politik, ekonomi, dan undang-undang. Pelaburan wang haram adalah haram ipso facto; tindakan menghasilkan wang itu hampir sentiasa bersifat jenayah dari sesetengah segi (kerana jika tidak, wang itu tidak perlu untuk dilaburkan haram).

Catatan 
Untuk mengelak pengulangan, rencana ini menggunakan istilah "bersih" untuk bermakna wang diperolehi secara sah, dan "kotor" untuk wang diperolehi secara haram.

Sejarah

Perkembangan moden 
Money laundering is not a crime  invented during the Prohibition era in the United States, but techniques were developed and refined then. Many methods were devised to disguise the origins of money generated by the sale of illegal alcohol. After Al Capone's 1931 conviction for tax evasion, mobster Meyer Lansky transferred funds from Florida "Carpet Joints" to accounts overseas. After the 1934 Swiss Banking Act, which created the principle of bank secrecy, Lansky bought a Swiss bank into which he could transfer his illegal funds through a complex system of shell companies, holding companies, and offshore bank accounts.

In the post-World War II era, legislators found themselves in a quandary as they were confronted with a growing list of commercial, fiscal, and environmental offenses that did not actually cause direct harm to any one identifiable victim; there was no stinking corpse. They decided that confiscating the proceeds of crime would adequately deter potential criminals. Anxious to avoid confiscation, organized criminals now needed to give these huge sums of money – not easily consumed or invested in the legal economy without raising eyebrows – a patina of legitimacy: they needed to "launder" it. Money laundering has been dubbed the "Achilles’ heel of organized crime", for it compels mobsters to seek out and co-opt established businessmen and women with highly technical know-how and access to legal institutions like banks to launder their plunder.

The term "money laundering" does not derive, as is often said, from Al Capone having used laundromats to hide ill-gotten gains. It is more likely  to mean that dirty money is made clean. At some point in the process there must be a switch between the two; necessarily the art is to keep that switch hidden.

Meyer Lansky perfected a predecessor of money laundering, "capital flight," transferring his funds to Switzerland and other offshore places. The first reference to the term "money laundering" itself actually appears during the Watergate scandal. US President Richard Nixon's "Committee to Re-elect the President" moved dirty campaign contributions to Mexico, then brought the money back through a company in Miami. It was Britain's The Guardian newspaper that coined the term, referring to the process as "laundering." (See Jeffrey Robinson's three books on money laundering, The Laundrymen, The Merger and The Sink.)

Money may be laundered through a complex business network of shell companies and trusts based in tax havens. "Smurfing" is an example of a money laundering technique.

Contoh

Cashing up 
A business taking large amounts of small change each week (e.g. a convenience store) needs to deposit that money in a bank. If its deposits vary greatly for no obvious reason this can draw suspicion; but if the transactions are regular and roughly the same the suspicion is easily discounted. This is the basis of all money laundering, a track record of depositing clean money before slipping through dirty money.

In the United States, for example, cash transactions and deposits of more than $10,000 must be reported by the cashier (the bank etc) as "significant cash transactions" to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network FinCEN, with any other suspicious financial activity identified as "suspicious activity reports" (SARs).

In other jurisdictions suspicion-based requirements may be placed on financial services employees and firms to report suspicious activity to the authorities.

Bisnes tangkapan 
Cara lain adalah dengan memulakan perniagaan yang aliran tunai masuknya tidak boleh dipantau dan mencorongkan perubahan kecil dan membayar cukai ke atasnya. Bagaimanapun semua pekerja bank telah dilatih untuk secara berterusan mencari transaksi-transaksi yang cuba untuk memanipulasikan keperluan pelaporan. To avoid suspicion, shell companies should deal directly with the public, perform some service (not provide physical goods), and have a business that reasonably would accept cash as a matter of course. Dealing directly with the public in cash gives a plausible reason for not having a record of customers.

For example, it is quite reasonable to think that a hairstylist is paid in cash and, even if she knows her customer's names, does not know their bank details. A record of a haircut must ostensibly be accepted as prima facie evidence. Service businesses have the advantage of the anonymity of resources — but the disadvantage that they must deal in cash. A business that sells computers has to account for the computers, whereas the hairstylist does not have to produce the cut hair, but the receipt for the computer, even if inflated, exists — that for the haircut probably does not. It is of course also possible to invent customers, purely for the purpose of accepting money from them.

Penggubalan undang-undang 
Banyak bidang kuasa menggunakan senarai jenayah khusus untuk hukuman pelaburan wang haram sebagai "pelabur wang haram sendiri".

Lihat juga 
 Anti-money laundering software
 Clearstream scandal
 Confiscation
 FATF
 FATF Blacklist, list of Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories 
 Front organization
 Identity fraud
 Intelligence agency
 Offshore banking
 Organized Crime
 Racket
 Shell (corporation) 
 Skimming (casinos)
 Skimming (credit card fraud)
 Skimming (fraud)
 Smurfing (crime)
 Swiss Banks
 Tax evasion
 Terrorist financing
 Patriot act
 White collar crime

Rujukan

Pautan luar 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

  
 UNODC - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - on money-laundering and countering the financing of terrorism