Money-laundering(洗钱)has been one of the world’s fastest-growing industries over decade despite increasing efforts by the world’s financial authorities to stamp it out. Following is a simple guide to the world of money-laundering.
Money-laundering is the process by which money obtained by illegal means is given the appearance of legitimate income and returned into circulation. The word and practice are widely believed to have been invented by the US Mafia(黑手党). As a means of mixing the dirty cash obtained from prostitution, gambling, gun-running, blackmail and its other wicked activities, so that it came out more or less clean, the Mafia bought up and operated large numbers of Laundromats(自助洗衣店). As good cash businesses, they were a good means of providing the appearance of honest cash flow.
Various techniques can be employed and the means of money-laundering, but they essentially boil down to three stages. Step one: moving the money from the scene of the crime A to a remote location B ideally in another country, preferably a bank account, if possible one that is anonymous. Step two: disguising the trail leading from A to B. Step three: making the cash available to the criminals, along with a plausible explanation of how ti came legally into their possession.
Apart from harming the economies that it feeds off, the money-laundering industry is essential to organized crime. As the head of the UN’s crime-fighting wing Pino Arlacchi remarked, organized crime “brutalizes society and diminishes respect for the value like honesty and cooperation upon which successful societies are based”. Or as a senior US official said in 1999, “money-laundering may look like a polite form of white-collar crime, but it is the companion of brutality, deceit and corruption.”
The liberalization of markets around the world and deregulation(解除管制)of exchange controls are regarded as the chief causes of the rapid expansion of money-laundering over the past decade. Together they have opened up many more channels for laundering dirty money and provided more opportunities to hide its origins. UN officials believe the most important single measure in eliminating money-laundering is the ending of bank secrecy.
1. We know from the passage that money-laundering( ).
2. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the phrase “stamp it out” (para. 1) in the first paragraph?
3. The reason why the Mafia bought up and ran substantial Laundromats is that( ).
4. In money-laundering, money would be moved from the scene of the crime to( ).
5. With the worldwide liberalization of markets, money-laundering has expanded rapidly by( ).