yes, people need to be aware of the universe of illicit origins. When I was working for the US government most of the people indicted under these laws (structuring, avoiding reporting thresholds, and then obfuscation so money laundering) were not terrorists or drug dealers. They were people like landlords freaking out because a tenant was suing them and they wanted to move their money without triggering a real or imagined $10,000 threshold. Whoops structuring is illegal straight to jail and we’ll take the money too! Tenant lawsuit still pending lol.
All while HSBC completely undermined the ‘purity’ of the licit financial system in the tune of billions over many years on behalf of the LITERAL CARTEL. Guys, 9/11 wasn’t that expensive to pull off, and today’s compliance measures wouldnt have flagged those wire transfers, so who is this for?
Stigmatizing the whole concept of having money and moving money has been an expensive and unnecessary and fruitless exercise. While increasing the costs of offering a financial service.
Non-political checks on the power of the state, like cash and its electronic corollary, private digital currencies, are needed in case of the failure of the political system to prevent the state from becoming oppressive.
An institution like physical cash can be powerful/deeply-embedded enough to survive totalitarian governments.
No. The obfuscation of licitly-acquired funds used for illicit purposes is still money laundering.
And it can't be, as long as fiat money exists. There's no tracing involved in passing notes around. The only times fiat transactions become suspicious is if you try and cross a border with a lot of cash or valuables on hand, which is where crypto comes in because it knows no borders. This makes law enforcement nervous.
I'm sure that besides crypto there's many ways to move large amounts of money or valuables across borders though. The rich do it, they just set up shell companies and pay licenses for intellectual property, paying a token amount of corporate taxes.
It is if done for purposes of e.g. avoiding taxes or purchasing illicit goods.
That said, obfuscation per se is not illegal in most jurisdictions.