Today, money laundering exploits the development of financial markets and globalization, taking advantage of the same channels that facilitate legitimate transactions, of the greater ease of communication, of technological and financial innovations and also of the fact that the reaction of the authorities is hindered by difficulty in acquiring information and by the costs of international coordination.
The possibility of using unwitting intermediaries for illicit transactions makes criminal organizations more dangerous. Loopholes in the rules and blind spots in the control apparatus of various countries enable illegal operators to engage in “regulatory arbitrage” on an international scale. Prevention and suppression may be further undermined by the selfinterested tolerance of some States and the opacity of some off-shore financial centres.