Anti-Money Laundering - AML

  

"News flash: you're not supposed to launder money. No, no one will come get you if you accidentally leave a $5 bill in the pocket of your jeans on laundry day. ""Laundering"" in the financial sense refers to the process of making dirty money clean in a more metaphoric way. If someone earns a buck doing something illegal, they need to be able to account for it in some legitimate fashion in order to spend it. Otherwise, the government is going to get wise.

There are lots of ways to launder (and yes, it's legal for us to tell you about them). In the good ol' days, the system was very straightforward: A bootlegger made a ton of money selling illegal alcohol but wanted to find another way to show that he had ""legitimately"" made the dough so the authorities wouldn't catch on. Well, a theater could show a cheap film but still be ""sold out."" So a bootlegger buys a movie theater and—voilà—the theater business shows itself to be hugely profitable with repeated ""sold out"" showings (even though there's never really more than a handful of people there)...and the bootlegging profits are now disguised as profits from the theater.

Today, money laundering usually involves fake accounts, fancy transactions faked on computer screens, and offshore accounts. The idea is the same: you create falsified documents in some way (called ""cooking the books"") to hide what you're doing from the IRS and the government. Anti-laundering laws are out there to catch people who do it and make sure their goose is cooked if they cook the books."

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Finance: What is the 2001 USA Patriot Ac...3 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop What is the two thousand won yusa

00:06

patriot act Yep That was the act that insured the

00:10

new england patriots would make it to the super bowl

00:12

every year from that ear forward Yeah Okay Okay Maybe

00:16

it only seems that way So the patriot act What

00:19

is it And how does it affect our lives Well

00:21

let's start by setting the stage September eleventh two thousand

00:25

one planes piloted by al qaida hijackers fly into the

00:29

two towers of the world trade center in new york

00:32

Mass devastation thousands of lives lost panic heart rending sadness

00:37

anger fear and then a whole lot more anger And

00:40

then some fear and more fear that it would happen

00:42

again that next time it would get us or our

00:45

loved ones Well enter the patriot act created by the

00:48

u s government to deter terrorist activities and for funding

00:53

And believe it or not yusa patriot is actually an

00:56

acronym Uniting in strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required

01:02

to intercept and obstruct terrorism Kind of rolls off the

01:06

tongue their lungs You've basted your tongue with coconut oil

01:10

But yeah that was the idea to make it as

01:13

inconvenient and difficult as possible for anyone with ill intent

01:18

to harm us or our country Sounds like a noble

01:21

and worthy bit of legislation right And get the act

01:25

has met its fair share of resistance Why Well some

01:28

people feel like it gives uncle sam a little bit

01:31

too much permission Tio you know goa snooping and wiretapping

01:35

bathrooms are rooting around in our sock drawers or taking

01:39

whatever steps team necessary whenever suspicion has been aroused that

01:43

somebody might be a terrorist Heavy thoughts there Well the

01:47

idea of the act is that americans should be willing

01:51

to sacrifice some of their civil rights to privacy and

01:55

to due process for the sake of the nation's safety

01:58

Right Well there's a civil rights trade off here like

02:02

got to think about well is it fair that we

02:05

should have tons of civil rights and then make it

02:07

easy for terrorist Do bad things to us source We

02:10

give some of that up and make it harder for

02:12

them to obama's right Because yeah we in this country

02:15

are big on our free speech and privacy and those

02:18

things are great and are a huge part of our

02:20

national identity but should they come at the cost of

02:23

would be terrorists having the freedom toe train and purchase

02:27

supplies right under our noses as they laugh about us

02:31

about our ideals and trying to stick to a fair

02:33

process even when they don't play fair Well shouldn't our

02:37

government be able to step in and investigate without search

02:40

warrants If the circumstances call for it The situation where

02:43

the likelihood of illicit activity is high and what happens

02:47

to corrupt cops who are getting paid on the side

02:50

to go tip off the terrorists when we do hunt

02:52

well where does that line get drawn Obviously we have

02:55

no answers here We're just asking a whole lot of

02:57

questions So yeah the act has not been universally popular

03:00

but it's also tough to say that it hasn't been

03:02

effective since Well we haven't had any nine eleven asked

03:05

episode's on u s soil since two thousand one So

03:09

what do we do in talking about this act in

03:10

a finance course Well direct your attention to title three

03:15

of the act The international money laundering abatement and financial

03:20

anti terrorism act Yeah this is the part that requires

03:24

banks to report suspected money laundering activities and to create

03:28

tougher rules to prevent money laundering in the first place

03:31

and also makes it tougher Teo do some types of

03:34

banking between us banks and financial institutions around the world

03:38

We get to inspect more when we're you know doing

03:40

business with shady nations who openly ate us So yeah

03:43

the world of finance got rocked a bit in the

03:45

wake of nine eleven as well although not is badly

03:48

is well pretty much any team these days gets rocks 00:03:52.065 --> [endTime] and they're playing me and patriots Yeah

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