Suggested activities. h Write down the answers, using the text:

h Write down the answers, using the text:

1 What new professionals involved in money laundering are emerging?.........................................................

2 What do they sell to criminals?......................................................................................................................

3 Where are the traffickers' proceeds invested?.................................................................................................

4 What is the idea of the European Directive adopted in 1991?....................................................................

5 Is the Directive very effective?....................................................................................................................

i Make a plan of this text:

j Agree or disagree and support your point of view:

1 The phenomenon of white collar criminals is new to Europe.

2 Shell companies originate from the name of Royal Dutch/ Shell, a famous Anglo-Hollandic oil producing, processing and trading company.

3 Fiduciary contracts are quite legal.

4 The main aim of all those criminals is to hide profits and shelter proceeds from the tax collector.

Text 4

There are differences in the predicate offence in the criminal legislation of the members states. Some countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom) include in the predicate offences all sort of crimes, following the provisions of the 1990 Strasbourg Convention; some others (Denmark and Greece) have a list with specific categories of crimes and the other countries (Luxembourg, Spain and Portugal) criminalise money laundering derived from drug trafficking offences only.

These differences among member states in the range of predicate offences to which money laundering legislation is linked, produce disparity in the prohibition of money laundering, legislations move towards the extension of the predicate crimes for the money laundering offence, including all categories of serious crimes, as recommended by Article 6, first paragraph, of the 1990 Strasbourg Convention, which obliges signatory states to criminalise the laundering of proceeds of «any criminal activity». Nevertheless, paragraph four of the same Article provides a clause of partial exemption to this provision: according to it, each signatory state is allowed to limit the predicate offences to a specific list of serious crimes (for instance, organised crime, drug trafficking, terrorism, etc.). The request for exemption should be eliminated. This would move financial and credit sectors of European countries to extend the reporting provisions to all suspected money laundering activities, independently of the typology of crimes. This development in the legislation will contribute to the improvement of the cooperation between financial institutions and law enforcement agencies.

There is recurring evidence in the country analysis of incressing shifts of suspected money laundering activities from regulated to unregulated sectors within the same state and between single member states. This trend is the result of the risk evaluation made by crime entrepreneurs; they obviously try to lower the risk of being detected.

The anti-money laundering preventive legislation of each member state must, therefore, be extended to eliminate the sectorial weaknesses. Measures will have to be studied to prevent certain sectors from remaining outside the field of the law and being possibly used for criminal purposes. It is necessary to pay attention to this extension. The risk of an overregulation is incumbent and appropriate measures should be studied for optimising the defence of the free market and the entrepreneurial activity from any unlawful actors, and the basic rules of free and equal competition characterising it.

§ Vocabulary notes