- Placement: moving the funds from direct association with the crime.
- Layering: disguising the trail to foil pursuit.
- Integration: making the money available to the criminal, once again, with its occupational and geographic origins hidden from view.
Placing “dirty” money in a service company, where it is layered with legitimate income, and then integrated into the flow of money is a common form of money laundering.
The Money-Laundering Cycle
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/money-laundering/laundrycycle.html
Money-laundering is the process that disguises illegal profits without compromising the criminals who wish to benefit from the proceeds. There are two reasons why criminals – whether drug traffickers, corporate embezzlers or corrupt public officials – have to launder money: the money trail is evidence of their crime and the money itself is vulnerable to seizure and has to be protected. Regardless of who uses the apparatus of money-laundering, the operational principles are essentially the same. Money-laundering is a dynamic three-stage process that requires:
These three stages are usually referred to as placement, layering and integration.
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UNODC on money-laundering and countering the financing of terrorism
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/money-laundering/index.html
File:Money-laundering.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Money-laundering.svg
Diagrammatic description of a money laundering scheme involving a service company. Based on the “Money Laundering” article in the EN wikipedia, with some looking at http://www.unodc.org/images/money-laundering/money_laundering_scheme_big.jpg
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Money laundering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering