> What is the source of the funds to launder and how/why is it already in the bank?
Money mules; you offer some influentiable kid some money to deposit cash into their account and send it on to someone else. Or an old lady. I'm sure part of the Nigerian prince thing is money laundering.
Second one that is very prevalent is physical stores that never seem to get any customers, e.g. in my neck of the woods there's these mobile phone companies everywhere. I'm sure they sell phones, simcards and accessories on occasion, but I can't see how it would cover the cost of rent, let alone make a profit. Unless once a month someone comes in with a few thousand in cash that then gets added to the books over time.
I don't think OP knows what he is talking about? You also need "thousands" of accounts, and unless you are opening these remotely, I don't know how you can get this many people to co-operate with your scheme. That also doesn't cover the first part: Laundering the money into the bank. (if the money is already in the banking system, there is nothing to launder).
To be honest, I don't think money laundering is real, or significant. I see most money laundering rules as hidden or mislabeled sanctions on other countries, group of individuals or institutions.
Money laundering is real, but for some reason everything that I read online (e.g. in news articles or comments) about it is complete nonsense.
E.g. here the nonsense is why money that you already have in a bank account needs to be sent to someone else via 1000s of random small transactions. At best that would add a layer of confusion, but you still have the money laundering problems for the sending and final receiving person.
It is complete non-sense. Banks don’t have a good framework for detecting suspicious transactions. They also happen to not really care and rightfully so: it’s not their job and shouldn’t be their responsibility.
What happens is that banks are trying to cover their ass and please regulators so they don’t get fined.
Of course all regulation does is add complexity. You still have the most common way to launder money: know the top-banker and have connections inside the bank. With the right amount of money you can buy all the KYC you need.
Which means all this regulations is either malicious or plain ignorant. I think it’s malicious.
Yes. It starts with sanctions on countries. Banks are only just starting to correlate payments that may actually be the same party if they are different physical institutions/entities, down to the legal entity (LEI).
What is the source of the funds to launder and how/why is it already in the bank?