Kim Berke­ley

Mon­ey laun­der­ing may be de­fined as an act where the ori­gin of il­le­gal­ly ob­tained mon­ey or prop­er­ty is dis­guised to ap­pear le­git­i­mate. This in­cludes sit­u­a­tions where there is any arrange­ment that in­volves the pro­ceeds of an­oth­er per­son's crime or the ben­e­fit of one's own crim­i­nal con­duct. The ob­jec­tive of mon­ey laun­der­ing is that a crim­i­nal wants to ben­e­fit from the crime and not get caught.

Mon­ey laun­der­ing is a crim­i­nal of­fence set out in sec­tion 45 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act ("POCA"). The of­fence is made out where a per­son knows or has rea­son­able grounds to sus­pect that prop­er­ty is "crim­i­nal prop­er­ty" and deals with that "crim­i­nal prop­er­ty" in some way such as re­ceiv­ing it, tak­ing pos­ses­sion of it, trans­fers it, con­ceals it, dis­pos­es of it, dis­guis­es it, en­gages in a trans­ac­tion (di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly) in re­la­tion to it, con­verts or brings in­to or sends it out of the coun­try.

What is crim­i­nal prop­er­ty is any prop­er­ty which is a ben­e­fit or rep­re­sents a ben­e­fit from crim­i­nal con­duct, be­ing con­duct which is an of­fence whether com­mit­ted here or abroad. The un­der­ly­ing crim­i­nal con­duct to mon­ey laun­der­ing, there­fore, can be any of­fence which may in­volve traf­fick­ing in arms and nar­cotics, or­gan­ised crime, cor­rup­tion, fraud and rob­bery to name a few.

Whether prop­er­ty is seen as crim­i­nal prop­er­ty will not de­pend on prov­ing the un­der­ly­ing crim­i­nal con­duct for it is un­nec­es­sary to show who car­ried out an of­fence, or who ben­e­fit­ed, or whether the of­fence oc­curred be­fore or af­ter the pas­sage of the law cre­at­ing the of­fence of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

To be li­able in law, a per­son would have to be deal­ing with crim­i­nal prop­er­ty know­ing or sus­pect­ing that it was prop­er­ty, which may have been il­le­git­i­mate in some way even if you did not know what of­fence may have tak­en place and who car­ried it out. The law re­flects, there­fore, how we have come to un­der­stand the way in which mon­ey-laun­der­ing ac­tiv­i­ty takes place in cir­cum­stances where it may be car­ried out not on­ly by the crim­i­nal but by any per­son who helps some­one ben­e­fit from the pro­ceeds of crime.

Typ­i­cal­ly, the process of laun­der­ing il­le­git­i­mate pro­ceeds can take place in three stages known as place­ment, lay­er­ing and in­te­gra­tion.

Place­ment is where cash is put in­to the fi­nan­cial sys­tem. Lay­er­ing usu­al­ly in­volves a com­plex sys­tem of trans­ac­tions de­signed to hide the source and own­er­ship of funds. And fi­nal­ly, in­te­gra­tion is the stage where the laun­dered funds are re-in­tro­duced in­to the le­git­i­mate econ­o­my ap­pear­ing from a le­git­i­mate source.

Where all or any one of these stages oc­cur, and you par­tic­i­pate or are in­volved in deal­ing with il­le­gal­ly ob­tained mon­ey or prop­er­ty, you may be sus­pect­ed of com­mit­ting the of­fence of mon­ey laun­der­ing de­pend­ing on whether you knew, or ought to have known or sus­pect­ed that this was il­le­gal­ly ob­tained mon­ey or prop­er­ty.

The law al­so crim­i­nalis­es mon­ey laun­der­ing in or­der to take the prof­it out of crime by en­sur­ing that pro­ceeds can be recog­nised, re­port­ed, traced and con­fis­cat­ed. Where an of­fence takes place, the ill-got­ten pro­ceeds can be seized and as­sets may be re­strained, con­fis­cat­ed and ul­ti­mate­ly for­feit­ed to the State.

�2 To be con­tin­ued: "Why am I be­ing asked for proof of ad­dress and to show a form of per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion?"

This col­umn is not le­gal ad­vice. If you have a le­gal prob­lem, you should con­sult an at­tor­ney-at-law.