Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

H. Money Laundering
1. First steps and development of draft definitions and
questions
At the beginning, the group agreed that money laundering as an offence is often
associated with other crimes, such as drug trafficking for example. For countries
with a principal offence rule, it will therefore not be possible to get information
when money laundering is a subsidiary offence.
Official units of different countries in charge of reporting suspicious transactions
probably have different ways of defining a suspicion. It is necessary to collect
various information: the number of suspicious transactions reported by official
units and the proportion of these known to the police, also the number of
suspected offenders on police level and the proportion of offenders prosecuted,
sentenced, or in prison, respectively.
More generally, this new offence brought back the discussion regarding the
use of other – not ‘classical’ – sources of data. Offences like money laundering
will make it necessary for national correspondents to look for data in such other
sources, e.g. with respect to suspicious transaction reports. Some members were
reluctant to give additional work to national correspondents. However, knowing
that OECD requests this sort of data, it should be possible for the national corre-