Most people will have seen the Italian Job. In the film a gang steals several million lira’s worth of gold from the Italian Government. With a logistically mind boggling plan they get the gold out of the city during a traffic jam. However, due to some poor driving, the gold ends up hanging off a cliff edge and the gang have to figure out how to get it off the coach, including themselves. Whilst that is a very major problem the real issue they have is getting the gold into some kind of monetary value so they can actually buy things. For example, people get very suspicious if you walk into a shop and try to purchase something with a gold bullion bar.
It is this suspicion that drives banks, building societies and financial services to invest in AML IDENTITY VERIFICATION www.w2globaldata.com/regulatory-compliance-solutions-and-software/aml-id-checks/. If customers suddenly have an amount of cash from somewhere, and they want to use it to open an account or as a deposit for a mortgage, it sparks checks and balances. The financial services who operate will want to know where the money has come from. The back end of a coach hanging off an Alpine roadside is not an acceptable answer.
This is called money laundering. It takes money that has been received through illegal activities and now needs to be placed in the open market where it can disappear and become “clean”.
