Corruption and Money Laundering

Three critical factors that the morally grey need to consider when conducting illegal money-taking activities are:

• how to keep their moonlighting activities hidden;
• how to avoid leaving a paper trail that can be traced back to the source and the recipient of the money;
• what should the recipient do with large amounts of tainted cash (which is the evidence).

In the past, a common way for the gift bearer to bribe his target was to give him cash in an envelop or suitcase. (Everyone's watched the Godfather.) Although direct cash bribes still occur today they are not necessarily the most convenient form of payment especially for scams that involve large amounts of money. The corrupt recipient could always hoard his money for the sake of hoarding. But generally speaking large amounts of money are useless if the owner can't spend it openly without attracting public attention. Hence, it is important for the morally grey to legitimise their tainted money (ie. money laundering) so that they can openly enjoy their gains.

However, graft is increasingly not tolerated nor legally acceptable in many countries today. Or at least, it can't be seen to be acceptable. Efforts have been stepped up in the war against corruption in the past few decades using modern investigation techniques; there has been greater cooperation on the international front to crack down on money laundering and push for greater transparency and accountability from public officials and corporations. However, it's difficult to ascertain just how much progress has really been made in stamping out corruption. With all this going on the morally grey have to work harder to conceal their activities and corruption schemes have just become more sophisticated and harder to detect.