Peculiarities of Counteracting the Money Laundering in Contemporary Financial Markets

Abstract

The development of new financial technologies has led to a significant acceleration of cash flows, an expansion of the range of opportunities for settlements and the use of digital financial instruments. One of the negative consequences of this process was the emergence of new money laundering schemes. The aim of the article is to qualitatively assess the changes in the sphere of money laundering with the use of financial institutions caused by the development of new financial technologies and virtual instruments, as well as to determine the list of signs of transactions with virtual assets that may indicate the implementation of money laundering schemes. Virtual assets have significant potential to stimulate financial innovation and efficiency in financial markets, but their individual characteristics create new opportunities for money laundering and terrorism financing. In view of this, it is of great importance in modern financial markets to improve methods of counteracting this phenomenon, in particular, the formation of a list of signs of transactions with virtual assets, which may indicate the illegal origin of funds or illegal purposes of their movement. The publication proposes an approximate list of signs of money laundering, which can be used by financial service providers in the process of monitoring transactions. Our approach involves dividing such attributes into six categories according to the volume and frequency of transactions, transaction patterns, anonymity, characteristics of transaction beneficiaries, source of funds, and geographic risk. A list of signs of suspicious activity when carrying out transactions, the use of assets with a high level of anonymity, client risks, links with criminal activity or high-risk jurisdictions has been determined. In order to understand the big picture and qualitatively assess the risks of money laundering and terrorism financing, the features identified in the article should be considered in the context of all available information on individual transactions. Taking into account the features and vulnerabilities of the latest financial instruments, we consider it an important prerequisite for updating the current practices of customer due diligence and detection of suspicious financial transactions.

Keywords

• financial markets
• financial technologies
• virtual assets
• money laundering
• risk