Illicit Transnational Businesses in a Global Economy: How Criminals & Terrorists Pay the Bills

This writing examines the structures and procedures of illicit businesses: the narcotics trade, arms smuggling, and human trafficking, and discuss their operations within a legal and financial context. Subsequent sections explore the thread that ties all of these enterprises together: money laundering (ML). It looks at practices money launderers use to mask illegal income; and then describes the anti-money laundering (AML) and countering of terrorist financing (CTF)-oriented legal mechanisms that are used to combat them, with an emphasis on UK and US law. The final section considers the status of the techniques used to counter the flow of illegal money, and makes recommendations for their improvement.