Money laundering — the process of transferring assets around in order to disguise the illicit origin of the money behind them — has been a huge and growing business for years, used by terrorists to finance their work, criminals to wash their spoils, (some) fat cats to avoid taxes and more. Aided by the rise of digital tools to speed up the flow of funds, and increasingly sophisticated techniques to evade detection, bad actors are moving between $800 billion and $2 trillion annually, equivalent to 2-5% of global GDP, according to the United Nations.
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