Peculiarities of criminal profits laundering by organized narcocriminality

Questions of financing,which are closely connected with shadow economy, are the base of all spheres of organized narcocriminality. The process of money launderingand using of criminal activity incomes play a special and important role in covering up tracks and consequences of criminal actions, it is alsotypical for many kinds of traditional organized criminality and shadow economy, but in a different degree. But the process of money launderingis an integral part of activity of leaders of drug trafficking; it is a significant point of criminal activity which is studied and which is aimed atlaundering the dirty money. Narcobusiness leaders spend this money on purchasing raw materials for making drugs, creating and perfectingillegal chemical laboratories, recruiting new members of criminal organizations, expanding and strengthening of the corrupted communications,etc. As a rule, a considerable part of criminal capitals (narcoincomes) is laundered in different ways and means, and then narcobusinessmeninvest the clean money into the profitable branches of legal economy. This situation can lead to a more and more extending capture of authoritypositions and to their gradual transformation into the criminal ones. The growth of the economic power of the drug mafia and its penetrationin the legal spheres of economy are promoting distribution of corruption, and, finally, it leads to the usurpation of political levers of power. Thepresident of Russia D.A. Medvedev set a number of urgent problems back during his election campaign, in his January theses. He emphasizedthat fight against corruption should become our national program. There are some major methods of criminal incomes laundering in the worldpractice. A great part of these incomes consist of cash, so, criminals transfer this money through the banking system as legal deposits, or investments,or payment for property. Leaders of narcobusiness split big banking deposits, reassign them in small portions, open trustee/front bankaccounts in order to avoid the attention of law-enforcement agencies. After depositing money in the bank it can be transferred to another countryas if to pay off a loan received earlier at any foreign firm. This money is used for buying land, enterprises, property, gold, securities andshares. Very often criminals purchase and then sell property on, to help them legalize income received as a result of such an operation. The typicalstages and ways of laundering criminal money are also described in the article.

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