On Money Laundering Crime

To the ordinary people in China, perhaps money laundering is a strange word. However, since middle period of the 20th century, the criminal activity of money laundering has developed rapidly, the crime of the international drugs and smuggle is on the increasing, the crime of underworld organization spreads day by day, various kinds of criminal groups take many kinds of means to attempt to change the income nature of the crime, make it" legalize ". With the development of science and technology, accompanied by the economic globalization, the crime of money laundering take its new characteristic and tendency. It come much more specialized, internationally exist and with much more intelligent, some new money laundering method, for example, money laundering through the internet take its form, therefore, the crime of money laundering has changed fast in the international norms and the criminal law of various countries.The criminal law of 1997, articles 191 and its 2001 amendments of our country has its specifications about money laundering, it is generally rational, practical and has certain effectiveness, but when compared with the specifications of the criminal law of the west, its defects is quite obvious. In the first place, in the criminal law of our country it only stipulate for drugs crime, organization crime of underworld nature, terrorist crime and crime of smuggle the upper reaches of the crime of money laundering, it is narrow on the range when compared with the stipulations of the west and it is not enough to curb the current situation of money laundering. Secondly, according to the stipulation of article 191 of our criminal law, only positive behavior constitute money laundering of behavior, but in the reality, some staff know perfectly well that some transactions is suspected of being involved in the crime of money laundering and do not report it to related departments, this will lead to serious consequences and do great harm to the society. Thirdly, the crime of money laundering of our country can only be formed on purpose directly in the subjective respect, according to relevant legislation of foreign countries, they clearly stipulate that culpable negligence can form money laundering crime too. Finally, that the current criminal law of our country incorporate such crime to undermining the finance order instead of impairing the judicial activity deserve discussing. The natural of money laundering is to cover up, conceal the income source of illegal income and make it legalized, such behavior with obstacles for the judicial authority to accuse such behavior and some clue and evidence and punish such crimes, therefore the normal activity of the judicial authority is seriously hindered.