Money Laundering and Financial Means of Organized 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 US$273 billion in the year 1995 for these 20 OECD countries and increased to US$603 billion in 2006. The overall turnover in organised crime had a value of US$595 billion in 2001 and increased to US$790 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.