What is Money Laundering?

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Black money is money, goods or values obtained from illegal activities such as smuggling, drug trafficking, illegal arms transfers, corruption, tax evasion and prostitution.

Money laundering, according to its source;

Income derived from illegal activities since its inception
Revenues obtained through tax evasion by issuing false invoices or falsifying documents, although the activity that initially constitutes the source of the money is legal
in the form of cash proceeds of crime.

Since the proceeds of crime are mostly in cash, it is very difficult for them to be used freely and in a short period of time, and in case it is determined that these proceeds are obtained from illegal activities, it is aimed to launder the black money obtained due to both the confiscation of these funds and the existence of fines and imprisonment penalties.

Laundering the proceeds of crime is the concealment of the source of the income obtained from illegal activities, giving it a legitimate appearance and making it legally usable.

The way to get rid of the social, economic and political problems caused by the crimes that constitute the source of money laundering and the crime of money laundering is to combat and eliminate the organizations that commit these crimes. For this purpose, it is necessary to prevent the money laundering and money laundering that finances these organizations and to solve the problem at its source.

The institutions and methods used for money laundering are as follows:

Smurfing
Opening an account with a fictitious or false name
Cooperating with financial institutions
Cash smuggling
Foreign exchange kiosks
Cooperation with foreign financial institutions
Forged or misleading import/export invoices
900 phone lines
Insurance Policies
Jackpots won from games of chance
Casinos, casinos, etc.
Representative offices in foreign countries

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was established to standardize anti-money laundering legislation and to ensure the continuous exchange of information among member countries.

FATF has 39 member countries, including Turkey. As a result of the studies carried out by the FATF, 110 recommendations were determined regarding money laundering.

Among the FATF recommendations, the rules regarding the identification of customer identification information and the retention of records are important in this sense. Financial institutions should not open confidential accounts or accounts with obviously false names. They should identify customers with legal documents and keep records of identification.

Financial institutions should retain all records of domestic or international transactions for at least five years to enable them to respond to future requests for information during audits.

FIs should pay special attention to unusually large complex transactions with no apparent legal or economic purpose. If possible, the purpose and source of such transactions should be investigated.

If financial institutions suspect that money is derived from criminal activity, they should immediately report suspicious transactions to the competent authorities.

In this sense, financial institutions should fulfill these responsibilities with a risk-based approach and monitor the transactions of their customers continuously and uninterruptedly.

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