Summary

Money laundering is often the subject of crime news articles in the media. What is characteristic of such news items is that the information is quite superficial, and the underlying content of the case is ignored. For this reason, the understanding of money laundering is also often partial or even wrong. It should be noted that although the concept of money laundering has existed in the Estonian legal system for over ten years already, this field has not been properly examined. Even the criminalisation of money laundering in 1999 did not result in comments on this complicated field. In Issue Number 3, 2007, of Juridica, an article by Tristan Ploom and Laura Feldmanis analysed the nature of money laundering in international legal acts, as well as in Estonian legal acts and court practice. This article provides a brief overview of the development of measures to fight money laundering in general, and looks at what there is about money laundering that should be condemned. In order to explain the nature of money laundering, this article presents some of its characteristics and models.