Money laundering is literally translated from the English word "money-washing", and the language expression of its image records the origin of the word: at the beginning of the 20th century, the financial director of an organized criminal gang headed by Ali Capone in Chicago, USA, bought an automatic washing machine to wash clothes for customers, and then declared it to the tax authorities by mixing the laundry with the proceeds of crime, so that the illegal income and assets were covered with a legal coat.
Money laundering in the modern sense refers to the act of concealing and concealing the source and nature of funds by various means through financial institutions, so as to legalize them in form.
The subject of money laundering crime is financial institutions or individuals, and there are five kinds of behaviors:
(a) to provide funds account;
(2) Assisting in converting property into cash or financial instruments;
(three) to assist the transfer of funds through transfer or other settlement methods;
(four) to assist the remittance of funds abroad;
(5) Concealing or concealing the illegal proceeds of crime and their sources and nature by other means. "
The main means of money laundering at present
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1. Antique trading-
You bought 40 Ming Dynasty vases at $5,000 each. You put them all up for auction and store them in 12 auction houses, preferably 12 different cities. When a vase is auctioned, you either sell it to the highest bidder or send your closest uncle to the auction house to buy it back.
People usually pay everything you buy by check, so when your uncle pays $5,500 in cash (that is, the auction price of $5,000 plus the handling fee charged to the buyer 10%) to the auction house for one of the vases, they will give you a check of $4,500, that is, the auction price minus the handling fee charged to the seller 10%.
These expenses can be completely written off as money laundering expenses. Fortunately, you can auction this vase again. Of course, the premise of doing this business is that you have some aristocratic temperament.
2. Life insurance transactions-
Insurance money laundering mainly focuses on life insurance, especially group life insurance. Through long-term insurance and short-term insurance, wholesale insurance, personal insurance and other abnormal insurance and surrender methods, the purpose of transferring collective and state public funds to the unit's "small treasury", turning them into personal private funds or evading taxes is achieved.
When taking out insurance, don't forget the names of "seeking benefits for employees" and "reasonable tax avoidance"-turning part of it into personal income through normal financial channels, or directly distributing funds that need to pay high personal income tax, and turning public into private or tax evasion by taking out life insurance for its employees and then surrendering them.
However, some insurance companies still actively promote this kind of "insurance policy" when they know that the insurance purpose is not pure, and some salesmen even use it as bait to make suggestions for their business objects and actively provide convenience for "money laundering". They brought in more business and took more expenses; However, the insurance company that "talks about heroes by scale" has completed the task index in a short time, and can also deduct a handling fee from the "surrender premium". Therefore, insurance "money laundering" is more like an ugly multilateral transaction.
3. Overseas investment-
The classic practice is: when importing, exaggerate the prices of imported equipment and raw materials, pay them to foreign suppliers in the form of high commissions and discounts, then take kickbacks from them, divide the illegal income and leave the illegal income abroad; When exporting, the price of export commodities is greatly lowered, or the invoice amount is much lower than the actual transaction amount, and the foreign importer will deposit the difference in payment into the exporter external account. If you are brave enough, you can consider setting up a personal account directly in an overseas bank.
In this way, it is not surprising that some overseas branches of state-owned enterprises have evolved into professional money laundering centers. In addition, we might as well run a leather bag company to launder money through agents or children and relatives who emigrated overseas. If the competent department sends someone to investigate, it will get some painful reasons for the loss. The following consequences are even more legendary: the heads of some so-called loss-making companies and their relatives became rich within a few years and became happy American "investment immigrants"; At the same time, these China companies illegally hold foreign exchange in overseas accounts, far exceeding the amount held by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. It should be pointed out that the protagonists in this process are precisely those government officials.
4. Underground money houses-
People still remember the case of Xu Shantou underground money house in 2002. Xu's main "assets" are more than 20 accounts opened in many banks in the name of more than 20 shell companies such as Xinxing Hongzhan Agricultural and Sideline Products Firm in Jinyuan District, Shantou City. In an office with ordinary facilities, Xu's daily business is to falsify financial statements and falsely report turnover and profits, but he has been paying various taxes and insurance and has no business activities and income. Due to the huge amount of money in the bank, it may be necessary to change accounts frequently. Every few new accounts, he gradually transferred funds from the old account to the new account.
At present, underground money houses in Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang are generally integrated with change shops in Hong Kong, and they are delivered in RMB at home and in foreign exchange abroad. There is no physical process of capital flight. Underground banks often borrow money from each other to form a linkage system.
There are two "advantages" in using underground money houses to launder money. First, the cost is very low. Take the Hong Kong dollar as an example. If the exchange rate of banks is 1.08, then the exchange rate of underground banks is basically only 1. 10. Second, when going abroad, black money can often flow back in the form of gifts from relatives and friends.
Every year, Chinese mainland underground banks "launder" at least 200 billion yuan of black money, equivalent to 2% of GDP.
5. Various casinos-
Lan Fu, the former vice mayor, was caught in the Yuan Hua case. When asked about Lan Fu's unknown property and his illegal gambling abroad, he boasted that in a few years, he earned as much as $650,000 plus HK$ 330,000 through gambling. Lan Fu's lies were exposed by some people who had been to this case and gambled with him, because Lan Fu almost failed every time he gambled.
If he is a master, he enters the arena with 6.5438+million chips, loses 6.5438+million chips and leaves the arena, asking the casino to credit the remaining 9 million into his account. He set up obstacles for possible tracing in the future. Therefore, people only notice that these people are losing money, but compared with the large amount of losses in the standard money laundering model, the risk of casino money laundering is often considered acceptable.
In fact, casinos are the most traditional money laundering places. In the early days, the drug trade in the mafia was mostly cash, and the money was generally stained with white powder. Once caught by the police, it is difficult to get away with it. Mafia members will take cash to the casino and exchange it for chips. Once they lose almost 30% of their money, they will change the remaining chips into cash, which will naturally turn the stolen money into "clean" income. In today's world economic downturn, gamblers from Asia are the only growing customer base. Compared with real-life casinos, online casinos have become a safe haven for money laundering. Most of gambling sites's headquarters are located in the Caribbean, which is called a "tax haven". Many websites are not regulated by government departments at all, nor do they follow the rules of international casinos. They don't even ask customers for identity information. Many criminal groups usually gamble symbolically once or twice after putting money into these accounts opened in gambling sites, and then immediately notify the website "I don't want to play any more" and ask the website to write a check in the name of the website to return the money in their accounts. In this way, the huge amount of "black money" can easily be "washed away"! According to preliminary estimates, the amount of "black money" laundered through hundreds of gambling sites is about 600 billion to 654.38+0.5 trillion US dollars every year.
6. Securities money laundering-
June 65438+February 65438+June 2002, Yufeng International, Fuchang International and Jinhe International were ordered to suspend trading in Hong Kong for money laundering. Most of these three companies hold shares by mutual assistance, and there are few minority shareholders outside the circle. Such companies are called "dry" in the Hong Kong market, and the companies called "dry" are often regarded as "best partners" of money laundering by some international organizations.
Simply put, money laundering only refers to "the process of hiding, disguising or investing illegal income through legal activities or construction".
In a narrow sense, money laundering refers to the process of legalizing the proceeds of crime by various means to cover up its true source and existence. These criminal activities mainly include drug trafficking, smuggling, fraud, corruption, bribery and tax evasion.
Anti-money laundering refers to the act of taking relevant measures in accordance with the provisions of this law to prevent the source and nature of drug crimes, organized crimes of underworld nature, terrorist crimes, smuggling crimes, corruption and bribery crimes, crimes against financial management order and financial fraud crimes from being concealed by various means.
Anti-money laundering is of great significance for maintaining the stable operation of the financial system, maintaining social justice and market competition, and cracking down on economic crimes such as corruption. Money laundering is a serious economic crime, which not only undermines the principle of fairness and justice in economic activities, orderly competition in market economy, the reputation and normal operation of financial institutions, but also threatens the security and stability of the financial system. In addition, money laundering is linked to serious criminal crimes such as drug trafficking, smuggling, terrorist activities, corruption and tax evasion, which poses a serious threat to a country's political stability, social stability, economic security and the security of the international political and economic system. After the "9 1 1" incident, the international community has deepened its understanding of the dangers of money laundering, and has also incorporated the fight against terrorist financing into the overall framework of combating money laundering. In view of the current situation of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism activities at home and abroad, the China government intensified its anti-money laundering efforts in 2003. The People's Bank of China has also strengthened its anti-money laundering work from the aspects of organizational structure and system construction, and strengthened supervision.