Money laundering and financial means of organised crime: some preliminary empirical findings

After giving a short literature review, the paper attempts a quantification of the volume of money laundering activities, with the help of a MIMIC (Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes) estimation procedure, for the years 1995 to 2006 for 20 highly developed OECD countries. The volume of laundered money was US273 billion in the year 1995 for these 20 OECD countries and increased to US603 billion in 2006. The overall turnover in organised crime had a value of US595 billion in 2001 and increased to US790 billion in 2006. These figures are very preliminary but give a clear indication of how important money laundering and the turnover of organised crime is nowadays.