Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

Money laundering 151
The evaluation of the trial questionnaire showed that the definition for money
laundering worked very well in the responding countries. All of them were able to
follow the include rules on both police and convictions level (tables H.1 and H.2).
France stated that data on money laundering were not available in regular police
statistics, but only from specific sources.
Regarding the exclude rules, more deviations were identified. Receiving and
handling of stolen property is included in the data of Finland and Poland, while
violations of the “know-your-customer-rules” are included in crime data of
Finland, UK: England and Wales, and on the police level also in Switzerland.
If the responses to the subsidiary questionnaire are also considered (table H.4),
the problem regarding receiving and handling of stolen property becomes even
more obvious. There it was asked whether legal provisions on money laundering
included the acquisition, possession or use of property, knowing, at the time of receipt,
that such property was derived from criminal activity or from an act of participation
in such activity; participation in, association to commit, attempts to commit
and aiding, abetting, facilitating and counselling the commission of any of the
actions mentioned in the foregoing points. France responded that these forms of
behavior are probably excluded, but covered by a separate receiving / handling
offence, while Germany and Poland stated that the forms are included, but might
also be covered by other legal provisions.
The reason for these answers to table H.1, H.2 and H.4 might be that money
laundering is a quite new offence, while receiving and handling of stolen property
or property derived from other property offences had been criminalized for a long
time before. Therefore, in many countries there will be a conflict between the old
legislations on receiving and handling of stolen property (etc.) and the fairly new
ones on money laundering.
As table H.3 shows, data availability on table 1.3.1 to 1.3.3 of the trial questionnaire
was very poor. Only for table 1.3.1 (Suspicious transactions reported)
most countries were able to provide at least some information. However, even for
table 1.3.1, not a single country was able to fill the table to full completeness. Also,
data availability on the different items of table 1.3.1 differed remarkably between
countries. On the other hand, data availability on the offence of money laundering
on police and convictions level was reasonably good. Also see table H.7 with details.
3. Final questionnaire and evaluation
Based on these results of the trial phase, the group decided to collect data on
money laundering in the final questionnaire, but drop the tables 1.3.1 to 1.3.3.
Additionally, a clarifying change of the standard definition of money laundering
was suggested. The first version did not refer to the criminal origins of the money.
Also, transactions regarding non-monetary property were suggested to be added