MONEYVAL Report Highlights Europe’s Challenges in Securing Money Laundering Convictions

European countries are falling short in achieving effective money laundering prosecutions and convictions, according to MONEYVAL’s recent report. MONEYVAL, the anti-money laundering (AML) monitoring body of the Council of Europe, stated in its annual report that the 35 member jurisdictions it monitors possess “comprehensive legal frameworks and powers to prosecute money laundering.” However, despite this extensive legal foundation, many jurisdictions are struggling to translate this framework into successful prosecutions and convictions.

In its latest assessments, MONEYVAL conducted 30 ‘mutual evaluation reports’ to gauge the efficacy of AML measures across various countries. Out of these, only one jurisdiction, accounting for just 3% of those assessed, achieved a positive rating for money laundering prosecutions.

“Effectiveness [was] notably weak with regard to money laundering prosecutions,” MONEYVAL observed. The report pointed out that while countries have developed robust AML legal frameworks, achieving “positive results in prosecuting and convicting money laundering offenses” remains elusive.

The organization specifically highlighted that prosecutorial challenges are most apparent in complex and serious money laundering cases, especially where money laundering is prosecuted as a “stand-alone offense” without an associated predicate crime. MONEYVAL noted, “It is a common tendency for investigators to seek to establish the existence of a predicate offense to prosecute money laundering.”

A predicate offense, as defined by MONEYVAL, refers to an underlying illegal activity, such as tax fraud, that serves as the basis for a money laundering prosecution. This focus on identifying predicate offenses often leads to “resource issues” for law enforcement, according to the report, and restricts the “limited use of financial investigations.”

The organization concluded that these resource constraints and investigative limitations “contribute to the significant discrepancy between the low number of money laundering convictions and the higher number of money laundering investigations.”

By fLEXI tEAM