The Financial Action Task Force has published a report on professional money laundering. The report is intended to assist authorities to target professional money launderers and the structures that they set up and use to launder money and to disrupt the organizations of their criminal clients. PMLs are referred to by the FATF as "individuals, organisations and networks that are involved in third-party laundering for a fee or commission." PMLs specialize in providing professional money laundering services, such as locating investments or purchasing assets, establishing companies or legal arrangements, acting as nominees, recruiting and managing networks of cash couriers or money mules, providing account management services and creating and registering financial accounts. By providing detailed explanations of the roles performed by PMLs, the FATF aim to facilitate the identification and understanding of how PMLs operate. The report provides recent examples of financial organizations acquired by criminal operations or co-opted to aid money laundering and focuses on some of the common methods used to launder funds, such as trade-based money laundering, account settlement mechanism and underground banking.

According to the FATF, a non-public version of the report examines the successful investigative tools and techniques for detecting and disrupting PMLs and makes several practical recommendations to assist authorities in countries that wish to address this issue. The report also highlights the need for coordination and information-sharing between authorities at national and international levels.

View the report.