Money laundering: some facts

This paper tackles the quite difficult topic of money laundering. After defining money laundering, and after explaining the three stages (steps), placement, layering and integration, the paper tries a quantification and estimation of the volume and development of money laundering activities. Besides it shows national and international measurements to fight money laundering and various effects on macroeconomics. The overall turnover in organized crime for example had a value of 800 billion USD in 2001 and increased to 1.700 billion USD in 2007. These figures are very preliminary with a quite large error, but give a clear indication how important money laundering and the turnover of organized crime is nowadays.