Concept of Money Laundering in India

Abstract

‘Money-Laundering’ - A sophisticated crime not to be taken very seriously at the first glance by anyone in the society as compared to street crimes. If you ask people what is money laundering? The general guesses from layman would be that it must be something related to drying, washing or may cleaning of currency notes. This is rather the human tendency about the world’s very big crime. As to the meaning of money laundering a concise working definition which was adopted by Interpol General Secretariat Assembly in 1995, which defines money laundering as: “Any act or attempted act to conceal or disguise the identity of illegally obtained proceeds so that they appear to have originated from legitimate source.” An amount 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt - USD 1500 billion has been alleged to have been laundered by Indians in Swiss banks - an issue raised even during the recently concluded Parliamentary elections. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) has become a serious issue due to the possibility of such funds being used for terrorist financing, apart from the revenue loss to the government.