Money laundering: a new perspective in assessing the effectiveness of the AML regime

This article offers a review of anti-money laundering (AML) laws by adopting a critical perspective on the use of criminal law to tackle economic problems. The article questions whether the offence of money laundering is an adequate tool to cope with issues, such as dirty money and illicit financial flows, which are embedded in the current deregulated financial system. In particular, it looks at the European AML lawmaking process and at its implementation at a national level. It analyses the interests, needs and expectations that alimented the EU AML lawmaking process, wi th in the background the general tendency to harden white-collar crime legislations, with the goal of hindering economic crime in a situation of financial insecurity. Furthermore, it deals with the legal challenges that the continual widening of the criminalisation of money laundering has posed, which could constitute an obstacle for the effective enforcement of such measures.